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THE CROWN OF LIFE 



FROM THE WRITINGS OF 



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HENRY WARD B EEC HER 



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EDITED BY 

MARY STORRS HAYNES 



WITH INTRODUCTION BY 



ROSSITER W. RAYMOND 




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BOSTON 

D. LOTHROP COMPANY 

WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BR<>MFIELD 



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Copyright, 1890, 

BY 

D. LoTHRop Company. 



INTRODUCTION. 



It is both delightful and difficult to describe the characteristics 
of Henry Ward Beecher. We who knew him love to recall his 
words and ways ; and each of us, like a lover sketching the feat- 
ures of the absent beloved, makes picture after picture, bearing 
for us some trait of likeness, yet not complete and satisfactory, 
even for us — how much less, then, for those who would seek by 
such means to gain acquaintance with a stranger, not merely to 
be reminded of a familiar friend ! 

Additional tributes of love and admiration to Mr. Beecher's 
memory are not needed. On the other hand, the time has not 
come for a critical estimate of his influence upon the political 
and religious history of his times, and the permanent value of his 
contributions to both. It is still too early even to pronounce 
upon the results of that work which was to him the noblest and 
dearest of all : the establishment of Plymouth Church, and its 
spiritual education through his views of doctrine and duty. As 
the first pastor of that church, he drew to it those who liked the 
minister, and were willing to receive instruction from him. And 
for forty years he impressed his teachings, not only upon adults 
trained already in other churches, but upon a new generation, of 
which, from its childhood, he was the guide. That generation, 
now in its prime, is the fruit and test of his labors. If it has 
been fed on oratory, "personal magnetism", sentimentalism and 
weakening heresy, under the taking title of "the Gospel of 
I.ove ", its failure now will be the failure of Mr. Beecher's system, 
though it will not disprove his own sincerity and devotion in the 



iv JNTRODUCTJOiY. 

propagation of error. But if, on the contrary, the Plymouth 
Church that gathered and grew up around him continues after he 
is gone a true church of Christ, united, fervent, active, and victo- 
riously aggressive in the work for which he trained it, the candid 
observer will confess that a seal of final authority has been set 
upon the truth he taught and the motives he inspired. 

This crucial test is in progress. It is only fair to say that all 
friendly fears and hostile prophecies have been disappointed hith- 
erto. The church that was supposed to be a heterogeneous 
mass, held together only by the attraction of one personality, 
and certain either to disintegrate in indifference or be rent asun- 
der by internal repulsions as soon as this harmonizing element 
should be withdrawn, has, on the contrary, gathering new inspira- 
tion from sorrow, presented thus far a spectacle of harmony, zeal 
and organized activity, confounding all the prophets of disaster. 
Fluent predictions have given place to fluent explanations, 
equally superficial. Time will show whether the true, deep 
explanation be not the Divine truth expounded by Mr. Beecher, 
applied by him as a motive to every human life, and illustrated 
in his own. But this momentous verdict cannot be rendered yet. 
Faith may anticipate it ; history only can record it. 

If it be, then, too late for eulogy and too early for history, 
what shall be written now.'' It seems to me that this is the time 
for recording such facts and views about Mr. Beecher as may be 
of use hereafter in forming that conception of him and his work 
which will be the possession of humanity after all his contempo- 
raries shall have passed away — a conception which no single 
statement can now express, but to which every trustworthy con- 
tribution will be of value. 

Such a contribution I am enabled to make from a personal 
acquaintance beginning in my boyhood, and especially from a 
closer companionship, in certain departments of study, during the 
last twenty years of Mr. Beecher's life. To be more precise, we 
read and discussed together certain books and theories, particu- 
larly such as bore upon the relations of Christianity to modem 
science and criticism. I was enabled by my professional edu- 
cation to assist him in his examination of various hypotheses, 



INTRODUCTION. v 

and his estimation of the drift of scientific thought, although, 
apart from any such suggestions, lie was himself a deep, close 
student, and in certain lines of science (such as botany) greatly 
my superior. On the other hand, I need not say, any slight ser- 
vice which he may have received in this way was immeasurably 
overpaid with such assistance as no mere study could supply. 
To pursue an investigation in such company was like journeying 
with some strong angel, who would go afoot for awhile, exploring 
like other people — would even, perhaps, indulgently let me take 
the lead, but where the labyrinth had overgrown the path, or 
some abyss or cliff seemed to cut it off, would open mighty wings 
of power and lift me high in air, giving me, in lieu of petty guid- 
ance, one broad survey, that showed the whole heaven clasping 
the whole earth, and dwarfed the difficulties of terrestrial roads 
into mere patches on a map. 

As has been said, the sphere of this special association was 
limited. I have carefully stated its nature and extent, because I 
do not wish to be understood as claiming any special authority 
outside of it for the account here given. Not only his own fam- 
ily, but many others of his friends, unquestionably enjoyed more 
intimate and frequent association with him than was my lot. In 
the one particular field I have named, however, I have reason to 
believe he had no other constant companion than myself. And, 
in some respects, this circumstance afforded peculiar opportuni- 
ties for observing his mental habits and methods. Whether 
these glimpses revealed the whole, may indeed be questioned. I 
think that what they did reveal was really characteristic of hhji, 
and not merely of the occasions when they were given. It must 
be remembered, however, that such analysis as I was able to 
make applies to his later life only. How much of the result may 
be ascribed to age and habit, I shall not here discuss. It is an 
interesting question, upon which a good deal could be said. 

Mr. Beech er himself overestimated, in my judgment, my intel- 
lectual comprehension of him. He inferred too hastily from 
intuitive recognitions of single points, a thorough acquaintance. 
But I knew better; for all my reconnaissances put together 
would not make a map of him. 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

He came to me once, saying, " asks me who can write 

some articles about me for a book he tliinks of publishing. He 
has several contributions promised ; but I have told him that if 
he wants anybody to tell him how my mind works, he must come 
to you." I refused to do this, even at his request, on the double 
ground that I did not know as much as he fancied, and that, in 
any case, I would not do it while he lived. 

Before that, however, I had once written at his request, in the 
German language, an account of his life, with some analysis of 
the sources of his power, to serve as an introduction to a German 
translation of "Life Thoughts", "Royal Truths", and a selection 
of sermons, published in three volumes at Berlin, in 1870. The 
result of this performance was amusing enough. Mr. Beecher 
forwarded my manuscript to the translator, vouching, I suppose, 
for its substantial accuracy. In due time the books appeared; 
and we found ourselves dressed and posed in the most amazing 
fashion. The worthy preacher at Frankfort-on-the-Oder who 
had translated the sermons and extracts with fair, albeit some- 
what clumsy fidelity, seemed to have felt himself entitled to use 
with greater freedom the manuscript material furnished by Mr. 
Beecher's friend, which he had interwoven with opinions and 
reflections of his own, and complemented with an extraordinary 
account of Brooklyn and Plymouth church, derived, Heaven 
knows whence. Here are a few specimen paragraphs : 

"In Brooklyn about 100 newspapers appear daily. The streets 
of Brooklyn are built at right angles. They run in endless 
straight lines. There are railroads in all of them, much used 
during the week. But it is Sunday when we land. All the 
streets are closed with great iron chains. Nowhere an omnibus, 
carriage, cab, milk-wagon or saddle-horse. We must resolve, 
like all the aristocratic Yankees, to make our way to church on 
foot. The deep mud and the miserable pavement oblige us at 

intervals to carry our ladies literally in our arms 

Not to miss the shortest way, we beg a good woman who passes 
with a book in her hand, to direct us to the church of the Con- 
gregationalists. 'Nothing easier,' replies the old lady, smiling 
amiably; 'pay no attention to the churches on the left. The 



INTRODUCTION. vii 

church of the Congregationalists is on your right. On that side 
you have simply to go by twenty-three churches and chapels. 
The twenty-fourth building, standing about in the middle of the 
street, is the Congregational church.' With thanks, we begin 
our journey to the church — in single file on account of the mud. 
At every hundred paces a Greek, Byzantine or gothic edifice lifts 
proudly to heaven its tower or dome. We have already passed 
the twentieth street. Everywhere sabbath stillness. From no 
quarter sounds an audible word. All doors are shut. 

" . . . . We read on the corner the prosaic name, ' 53d 
street ' ; and before us stands in its full proportions the marble 
temple of the Congi-egationalists, erected twenty-two years ago. 

"We enter. No altar, no organ, no pulpit, no pictures, no 
flowers, no lights. The church is crowded. There are some 
three thousand present. The deepest stillness reigns. At last 
there appears behind a desk, which stands on the same level as 
the audience, a tall, broad-shouldered man in ordinary dress (the 
clerical coat is unknown in America) with a black neck-tie. It is 

the preacher Immediately there arises from all the 

benches a melody, softer than the sighing of the wind upon the 

waves Not all the Plymouth churches pray singing. 

In the Brooklyn church Beecher introduced it after a long, fierce 
struggle." 

And so on, and so on ! Mr. Beecher's merriment over this 
description may be imagined. It was perhaps more annoying to 
his ambitious young biographer, who found himself, in the same 
pages, cited with florid compliment as an authority, and thus 
made apparently responsible for the marble temple in the middle 
of the street, and other fantastic novelties. Mr. Beecher pre- 
sented the book to me, as a memento of my literary undertaking, 
and slily suggested that either I had presumed on his ignorance 
of German, and smuggled all that stuff into the manuscript, the 
contents of which I had pretended to translate to him before he 
accepted it, or else my German was so bad that this was all the 
editor could make out of it ! As to correcting the misstatements 
of the pious translator, he said it was better to let such things 
take care of themselves. 



viii 2NTR OD UC TION. 

After this unexpectedly long and desultory introduction, I will 
set down simply the peculiar aspects of Mr. Beecher's mental act- 
ivity, so far as it was exhibited to me. On other occasions, I 
have mentioned some of them, and have also sketched essential 
traits of his character and beliefs, as I had learned to know them. 
But the latter view will not be taken now. The extracts of 
which this book is composed will, to some extent, constitute a 
self-revelation of him. Perhaps the hints I give may help the 
reader to understand and harmonize them. 

The first peculiarity in the action of Mr. Beecher's mind was 
its periodicity. As I have elsewhere explained, he had three dis- 
tinct mental states : the receptive and inquiring or filling-up, the 
spontaneously productive or creative, and the passive or resting 
state. The third was a reaction from the second. In it, he 
loved to be alone with birds, flowers, gems, pictures — things, in 
short, that asked no questions, and called for no active reciproci- 
ties. He welcomed, also, the company of little children, or of 
friends who would let him alone, and not try to " draw him out ". 
If these conditions were not fulfilled, he would often depart sud- 
denly without explanation or farewell. 

His productive state was, in its nature, the fitful mood of gen- 
ius; but he had studied its conditions so thoroughly and he 
followed its laws so consistently as to have it under control to 
a degree unparalleled, I believe, among men of equal power. 
Apart from all his innumerable other activities, he carried the 
consciousness that every Sunday must, if possible, find him in 
this state; and he so arranged the physical and mental strains 
of the preceding days as to bring it about with astonishing 
regularity. 

No doubt it was the result of lifelong habit that this produc- 
tive activity seldom lasted for more than two hours. Probably 
in his younger days, he could remain under its influence longer, 
or recover from its reaction more quickly. But as I knew him, 
two hours' work in speaking or in writing was usually all that he 
could do without repose aud recovery — mainly through silence 
and sleep. From one to two hours had been for so many years 
the customary period of his supreme effort in speech or sermon, or 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

writing of editorials or " Star papers ", and he had so thoroughly 
trained himself to prepare for that period and to relapse from it 
without further waste of strength, that at last he could scarcely 
command his own powers in any other way. I have known him 
on an occasion — not public — calling for more prolonged con- 
tinuous labor, to lose the thread of his thought, forget scenes and 
incidents, and be obliged to suspend all efforts at renewal until 
the following day. Moreover, it was not easy then to resume 
the broken argument, until by some fortunate hint an association 
of ideas was aroused, and the previous mental condition was 
instantly reproduced — after which, there was no further diffi- 
culty. He used to describe such an experience as the clouding 
of his view, after a certain period of intense and keen perception, 
by a mist or shade closing in upon it, and the subsequent lifting 
or parting of this vail, and revelation of the original scene 
unchanged. But it was not always the former scene that thus 
returned — perhaps never, unless it were a simple picture of 
memory, and even then, though the haze of mental obscuration 
might have been removed, some further impulse might be neces- 
sary, as in the illustration just given, to flash before the eye the 
vision it had had and lost. For all events, conversations, and 
processes of his own thought which stood connected with partic- 
ular scenes, his memory, once aroused, was accurate, even to 
minute details. On the other hand, he could not quote from 
memory, or, as a general rule, trace to its origin any idea which 
he had once received and made his own. 

Not only the conscious action of Mr. Beecher's memory, but 
the operations of creative conception and utterance in his pro- 
ductive mood, were dependent upon a sort of space-association. 
His conclusions were " views ", in an almost literal sense. Ac- 
cording to his own account, his fine sermons, before he preached 
them, lay before him like a wide prospect, perfectly defined in 
every part. It was not until an aspect of truth, taking shape 
slowly and by degrees in his mind, spread itself at last thus 
complete before him, that he was ready to express it in a ser- 
mon. Both the argument and the illustrations were usually thus 
foreseen. 



X INTRODUCTION. 

In the final act of utterance, another mental operation was 
involved — the construction of sentences and the choice of words. 
But here, also, the pictorial or scenic conception of his theme con- 
trolled and assisted him. For he was always simply translating 
and declaring what he saw, and never pretending to see what he 
labored to describe. The result was a singular felicity of style, 
and freedom from such rhetorical blemishes as " mixed figures " 
or false transitions. 

It must be added, however, that the force, fluency and beauty 
of language which he had at command were distinctly the prod- 
uct of immense reading, conducted (especially in earlier years) 
for this particular end. Even at a recent period, he named to me 
authors whom he said he read because they brought him words, 
not specially because they gave him valuable thoughts or facts. 
Several times I have been surprised to find him reading with 
apparent zest essays or romances which no critic would place in 
the first rank. " How can you bear such turgid 'fine writing' .-*" I 
said once. "It's a gorgeous vocabulary," was his reply; "and I 
want it ! " Putting many things together, I can perceive that his 
later reading, being, to so large an extent, among philosophical, 
psychological and scientific books, tended to crowd him into the 
precise but narrow nomenclature which these employ; and he 
turned to vivid narrators, even to sophomoric spouters, as a cor- 
rective. Some criticisms of books which I find in his letters 
show that he fully appreciated clearness and simplicity of state- 
ment ; but when, with a special purpose, he was " reading for 
words", his taste was oratorical. He would then enjoy a style 
which belonged to the platform rather than the printed page, 
although he knew well enough that it was a bad style. At a cer- 
tain stage of his life, as many will remember, he freely employed 
the terms of phrenology; but as subsequent studies brought him 
to a point where he could no longer hold the theories of phrenol- 
ogy, the words expressive of those theories were unconsciously 
abandoned — a striking illustration of the manner in which he 
used language wholly as a means of expression. 

In the vehemence of extempore speech, he was often not able 
to make selection among his own thoughts. "Whatever was in 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

him, as part of the panoramic conception of his theme, was likely 
to take fire and blaze up with the rest. But in the selection of 
words to express his thought, he exercised a perpetual and subtle 
choice. Even here, his conception was pictorial. " Words ! " 
said he, one day ; " when I am well started, I don't need to hunt 
for words ! They come in crowds, getting in one another's way, 
and each one saying, ' Take me ! take me ! ' " 

Close observation of the process of his choosing among words 
has shown it to differ in rapidity, rather than kind, from that of 
ordinary men. What we do, when, pen in hand, we mentally 
ransack our recollections of synonymous and related terms, or 
when we consult (mostly in vain) somebody's Thesaurus, he did 
instantly and automatically, marshalling before him by uncon- 
scious summons the whole host at once. It was often noticeable 
that they trooped in etymological bands, and according to primi- 
tive root-sounds and root-meanings. Few men have ever so com- 
pletely transformed classical culture into a critical appreciation of 
the mother-tongue. While Mr. Beecher, so far as I ever knew, 
read, after middle life, little or no Latin and Greek, no one who 
minutely observed his language could doubt that he had studied 
both, and that English words brought before his swift perception 
their origins, and therefore their essential meanings and degrees 
of fitness and force. With this intimate knowledge of them was 
coupled an educated and exquisite feeling for the association of 
sound with sense. He used strong Saxon words, when they were 
the right words ; but he had none of that affected Saxon simplic- 
ity which takes the resonance out of Bryant's Homer. His 
favorite prose writer, John Milton, was not less afraid of Latin 
words than he, if they carried the melodious thunder he desired, 
and added rich historic significance to their immediate message. 

It was amusing, sometimes, to watch his impetuous dash after 
a word — getting it, as it were, by the collar, as he prolonged the 
s or m, or other root-initial, until the resisting captive was forced 
to come out of the crowd altogether. Often he would make such 
a dash after a word which should by analogy exist, but did not ; 
and then he would create a new word out of the root-form with 
which he had started, or the vivid picture behind it. Instances 



xii INTRODUCTION. 

of this sort were more frequent than the printed reports of his 
sermons (especially revised reports) will show. Such expressions 
as, " He sends to care for them his mothering angels " ; "a great, 
big, carbunculous lie"; "mean, wriggling, vermicular men," etc., 
sprang from embarrassments of this or an analogous sort. Here, 
also, it may be remarked, that the process itself was not unique ; 
but its rapidity and audacity were so. 

In many, perhaps in most cases, the panoramic " view " or con- 
ception of Mr. Beecher was not broadly recognizable by his audi- 
ence, because, as a general rule, he ended a sermon leaving much 
unsaid. This could be easily proved by inspecting his rough 
notes. Almost always they indicated aspects and applications 
which were omitted for lack of time in delivery. He habitually 
limited himself to an hour in preaching; and as the hand of the 
clock approached that period, made haste to a conclusion, which 
was usually, in obedience to oratorical instinct, a true peroration 
in form. But deeper analysis would show how really incomplete 
M^as the exposition thus artistically rounded to a close. Strictly 
speaking, it was, in most cases, the " application " rather than the 
exposition proper, which was cut short. His sermons were usu- 
ally built on one plan : First, a statement of the truth ; then, the 
enforcement of the duty. But the preliminary statement often 
involved the application ; and the subsequent use of the doctrine 
often illumined the definition of it. So, after all, there was 
something lost under both heads when the clock cut short the 
preacher. 

Mr. Beecher used to say that he was, in the presence of an 
audience, an entirely different person from what he was as a pri- 
vate individual ; that he felt conscious of a relation of authority 
and power, which forsook him when he came down the pulpit- 
stairs. " I am, in private," he said, " though you may not think 
it, constitutionally shy and reserved ; often inexplicably afraid to 
speak ; seized with reluctance or fear, even upon entering a room. 
But when I face an audience it is all gone. In that mood, I can- 
not be daunted or disconcerted. If the house took fire, I would 
order the crowd to go out quietly; and they would, too! It is a 
different life altogether ! " 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

This sketch of his productive state is far from complete, even 
as a summary of the partial study upon which it is based ; but I 
must content myself with but one additional touch. Mr. Beech- 
er's prayers, considered purely as revelations of mental processes, 
confirm the foregoing statements. Being wholly unstudied and 
spontaneous, they give, indeed, the most valuable evidence of all 
concerning the workings of his mind. Proceeding, evidently, 
from personal experience and emotion, they may be searched 
almost in vain for any expression so peculiarly personal that it 
cannot be realized, adopted and employed by a multitude of wor- 
shippers. Moses, always carrying his people on his heart, even in 
the awful loneliness of his intercourse with Jehovah, was not 
more truly conscious of his representative position than these 
prayers indicate Mr. Beech er to have been. Liturgies, or those 
dry recitals of commonplace petitions which have the monotony 
of liturgies without their music and grace and dear associations, 
are, of course, appropriately collective in character ; but the mar- 
vel here is, that in infinite variety and with the perfect freedom 
of solitary prayer, the individual soul utters itself so that all souls 
can — nay, must — take part. If we seek the explanation in the 
structure of these prayers, we shall find that, almost without ex- 
ception, each of them consists essentially of a "view" of God — 
a view which all can have who will take the same standpoint of 
trust, gratitude and joy. This view being expressed, the prayer 
concludes with a few general petitions more conventional in char- 
acter and form. The real heart of the prayer, its communion 
and its exalting power.are in the "view". 

Something must be said about that one of Mr. Beecher's states 
of mind which, though enumerated first, has been left to the last. 
I mean his inquiring, studying, filling-up mood. This was, in 
fact, the one in which he passed most of his waking hours. The 
supreme efforts of production and the relapses of exhaustion did 
not compare in duration with the periods of eager, inquisitive, 
observant and reflective accumulation. He was like one of the 
reservoirs employed in some of our western mining districts in 
the variety of hydraulic mining known as "booming". The 
gates being opened, a tremendous torrent rushes out, and does its 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

brief work mightily; then the reservoir lies empty for a little 
while ; then, the gates being shut, the water of a thousand rivu- 
lets is gathered again for a new exhibition of power. 

Nothing came amiss to Mr. Beecher's gathering mood. He 
did not go hunting for particular things (except as he did it in 
pursuing some special line of reading) ; he questioned everything. 
He studied all occupations and trades, until he had learned what 
chords to strike that would echo in the bosom of each different 
class of his fellow-men. He studied men, in order to gain influ- 
ence over them ; and while his inexhaustible credulity of good- 
ness, believing all things and hoping all things, often betrayed 
him in individual judgments, his knowledge of human nature 
was marvelous, and for the purpose for which he acquired and 
used it, well-nigh unerring. 

The thoughts, facts, illustrations and impulses thus accumula- 
ted, seemed to lie in his mind as if in a solution, slowly crystalliz- 
ing into new forms. Some day he would have a "view"; and 
then the result of long pondering would suddenly appear. As I 
have said, he tried to save his mood of utterance for the occa- 
sions when utterance was a public duty. But he was sometimes 
roused to it in private. Then it made no difference whether the 
audience were many or few. He became the inspired orator. I 
remember several occasions of this kind, when he poured out 
grand and beautiful expositions of truth, which never recurred 
afterwards to his thought. He moved on, and those particular 
views were not visible from any other summit. 

Of books in which he was really interested, he was a slow and 
careful reader. I think he rarely marked them with marginal 
comments in words ; but I have frequently found in those which 
he lent to me dashes and scorings, indicating passages to which 
he wished to turn again for further study, or which he regarded 
as specially significant. The only case 1 can recall in which he 
marked a book of mine is that of " Lorna Doone ". He bor- 
rowed the story, and kept it for some time, frequently expressing 
his delight in its minute descriptions of nature. After he had 
returned it, I found written in it the following admirable criticism : 

"This book is like a capital fowl, well cooked — somewhat 



INTRODUCTION. xv 

over-stuffed with delicacies, and possibly, a trifle too long in the 
oven ; otherwise, a dish fit for a king." 

Turning from these attempts to sketch a single "view" of this 
many-sided character, let me conclude with one or two brief 
hints, suggested by it, which may be useful to the readers of the 
passages collected in this book. 

1. Remember that each of these fragments, so far as it states 
a proposition or opinion, is probably part of a larger " view ", and 
that a full, systematic statement of Mr. Beecher's opinions cannot 
be made by piecing together these fragments out of their original 
perspective relations. If his own more extended statements were 
but single views, these portions of them are only glimpses. 

2. Remember that the dominant purpose back of all these 
utterances was to help and to win men. They do not analyze 
truth, as a chemist might analyze a drug, but exhibit it, as (in the 
old-fashioned phrase) a physician " exhibits " a medicine. This 
is the immemorial attitude of the preacher toward the truth. 
Mr. Beecher used to say that half the controversies of theology 
came from the attempt to interpret as universal and complete 
propositions what Paul said to meet individual cases. He was in 
this, as in many other particulars, like Paul. However wide and 
grand the vision before him, he was always showing it to some- 
body, and emphasizing those features of it which he desired that 
person or class of persons to perceive and feel. " I must aim at 
some one," he said; "then I shall reach, perhaps, some other one.* 
But if I aim at everybody, I shall hit nobody." 

3. Do not rest in the shallow notion that these are the mere 
coruscations of intellectual electricity — the flashes of poetic gen- 
ius — the heat of a blazing sympathy only. Even in these broken 
lights may be discovered the steady glow of deep and devout 
thought. Mr. Beecher was not superficial or reckless ; his grasp 
of great mental and spiritual problems was not the light touch of 
a decorative artist or a dallying connoisseur. It is worth while 
to seek beneath the brilliancy of his wit and eloquence, even 
beneath the flowing current of his sympathy, for the profounder, 
eternal meaning — the word of God, spoken by the mouth of a 
prophet. RossiTER W. Raymond. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



The first grand element of liberty is a heart trans- 
formed unto the temperature of heaven, unto the Divine 
benevolence, so that a man shall not be so sensitive 
about himself nor about the future of his own name, 
nor about his standing, nor about the opposition he 
may bring upon himself, nor about anything that is 
low and personal whatsoever, but may hold all his 
rights in the sublime and most beautiful temperature' 
of universal benevolence and Christian love. 






A man is free just in proportion to the number of 
natural or social laws that he has learned to obey. 
For a man is of himself very little ; but he has learnt 
the courses of God in Nature and employs them, and 
he rides upon the sea or by steam upon land, and goes 
swifter than the bird ; but in every case it is because 
he has rendered himself subject to some or many nat- 
ural laws. Instead of liberty consisting in an unhar- 



2 THE CROWN- OF LIFE. 

nessed freedom, liberty consists, in its largest estate 
and greatest variety, in obedience to the greatest num- 
ber of social, moral, and civil laws. " Take My yoke 
upon you, that you may be free ; carry My burden, that 
you may be light." 

The way to emancipate a man is to make him so 
large that you can't afford to furnish iron enough to 
make a fetter. 

A perfect Christian is the one and only creature 
that has absolute liberty unchecked by law, by institu- 
tion, by foregoing thoughts of men, by public senti- 
ment. Because a perfect man is in unison with the 
Divine soul, he has the whole liberty of God in himself, 
according to the measure of his manhood. But he 
has liberty to do only what he wants to do, and he 
wants to do nothing that is not within the bounds and 
benefit of a pure and true love. He becomes a law to 
himself; that is, he carries in himself that inspiration 
of love which is the mother of all good law. He is 
higher than any law. For you and for me, riding 
across country, there are metes and bounds, fences, 
rivers, ditches; but for birds there are none. They 
fly higher. For low men, low-toned, there are metes 
and bounds of custom and public sentiment or institu- 
tions, laws and restrictions; but for one who has gone 
up higher than all these into the universal and divine, 
there are no such things. He thinks what is true, he 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 3 

does what is benevolent. His will is with God's will. 
He has liberty, not to do anything on his own judg- 
ment and desire, but anything that is not contrary to 
reason, conscience, and the desire of a soul wholly 
controlled by the spirit of love, which is the spirit of 
Christ. 

You cannot put men "together as you put together a 
carpenter's logs when he has hewn and jointed them. 
Society has to be made up of free men, and a free 
man is a largely branched man all around. That gov- 
ernment is coming more and more into vogue which 
rejoices in diversity, and which merely says that one 
man's liberty shall not prevent another man's liberty, 
but that he shall accommodate himself and his neigh- 
bor likewise. 



* 
* * 



Men's rights are a great deal of trouble to them. 
They assert them and get them, and then they don't 
know what to do with them. A man's rights, half of 
them, are meant to give away. 






The beatitude of your rights is, they are your 
benevolences. You can yield them, give them away. 
And the law of social unity is this law of assertion of 
a man's individuality, and the use of that individual- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



ity as a benevolence for those that are around about 
him. 



* 



The letters that spell rights are the letters that spell 
duties. 



* 



The supreme conception of •manhood is that of a 
vital spirit full of voluntary action ; full of unrestrained 
will; full of thought, flying high and free as the winds 
fly, and profuse as the flowers of spring. God's spirit 
developes a thousand times more bountifully from the 
human soil than the sun does from the natural soil, all 
vines, all shrubs, all high growing trees, all lowly 
plants, grass, moss, everything in its place, and of its 
kind. 

It is this multifarious spontaniety in man that con- 
stitutes the grandeur of manhood ; and it is this spon- 
taniety that men try to repress by institutions, by 
denominations, by sects, by authority in its different 
forms, hewing off the branches here and there. But 
liberty is one of the signs of Christianity; by as much 
as a man is a craven and trembles before his priest, by 
so much is he less a Christian. 

By as much as a man is superstitious about Sun- 
days, about ordinances, about forms and ceremonies, 
by so much is his Christian character weakened. He 
that loves God until he fears nothing is the typical 
Christian — the ideal man; and out of him proceed all 
kindness, all truth, all love, all faith, all self-respect. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



all needful restraint, all things that go to make him a 
full man, moving in the ranks of society easily and 
naturally. 



* 



No man is so free as that man who has accepted the 
law of God which is expressed in the words, "Thou 
shalt love God supremely and thy neighbor as thyself." 
There is no sound in the universe that cannot be 
chorded to that. Love is the only true concert-pitch. 
Let pride be the concert-pitch, and you cannot bring 
the orchestra of human nature into agreement with it. 
Let taste be the concert-pitch, and you cannot make 
all the other faculties of a man harmonize with it. 
There is many a part of our being with which all the 
other parts cannot be made concordant. But sound 
the word love — love to God and man — and there is 
no passion or appetite, there is no taste, there is no 
social feeling, there is no intellectual element, there is 
no moral sentiment, that cannot be brought into per- 
fect accord with it — yea, and be made nobler and bet- 
ter by it. 

Rights increase as man increases — and as the man 
increases not merely in physical stature or in skill of 
manual employment or material strength, but in char- 
acter. So as men work up higher and higher toward 
the Divine standard of character their rights and liber- 
ties increase. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
* # 



A true life in Jesus Christ is a life of liberty, of 
largeness, of joyfulness and peacefulness, and if a man 
wants to get the most out of the life that he is living 
in this world it is better that he should reap the crop 
out of the top of his head and not out of the bottom 
of it. 






What sanctity there is in loves and friendships that 
have found their way up into the crystal dome ! 

To love one is to hold the heavens behind him, his 
faults and failings being cast upon the background of 
the immortality of love. What power is there in souls 
thus drawn together by mutual sympathy and helpful- 
ness, whose very life is the exaltation of the spiritual 
life of each ! 

Whoever has kindled in him that feeling of affection 
by which he devotes his whole life to the filling up of 
other people's lives, has the beginning of the knowl- 
edge of God — that is, of its higher elements and no- 
bler attributes. Nobody can come even into the outer 
court of this understanding but he comes through 
some reciprocity, some echo of God in his own self. 



* 
* # 



No one has true love who does not know that it is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 7 

the inspiration of nobility ; that it is a power which is 
carrying its object upward, being wilUng to suffer for 
the sake of lifting it higher and higher. That is the 
test of man's love, because God has given it to us as 
the test of His own love. 



* 
* * 



A child at the foot of a mountain and a father at 
the top cannot see alike. The child is embosomed in 
shrubs and trees, and is enveloped in darkness; the 
sun comes to the valley where he is, long after it 
strikes the mountain-top; it passes from the child's 
sight far earlier than it does from the father's; and 
the view of the surrounding country which the child 
gets below is not to interpret that which the father 
gets above. So our conception of finite love is not to 
interpret God's conception of infinite love. How little 
do we understand perfect love, infinite love, out of 
which all the universe is born, by which it is gov- 
erned, which converts pain and sorrow to helpful uses ! 
Earthly love is most beautiful, to be sure ; it is as yet 
uncrowned. But what is the love of the Infinite? 
What is love to a heart that can take in ages and the 
race ? What is that love which is unfathomable, 
and which includes infinite tenderness and infinite 
compassion ? 

Love is the true alchemy that can change every- 
thing into gold. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






A love that penetrates as a perfume does; that 
never sleeps ; that divides every thought or feeling of 
joy and sorrow; that turns service to regency; that 
makes pain a pleasure ; that is always growing ; that in 
the loved one's absence fills all life with his image, 
and his presence obliterates the whole world beside; 
that with him makes the desert wilderness a garden, 
and without him changes Eden into a barren croft; 
that lives in him, and without him dies — who does not 
know that such a great love is possible ? I do not say 
that every one has found it in his own experience, but 
I think that every one must be impoverished that has 
not known such love; sometimes worthily bestowed 
and sometimes unworthily. This power of love is 
given by God to men ; and there is nothing like it, 
either for beauty or for majesty. 






The love which is the basis and the sum of Chris- 
tianity is something grander than any specialization of 
affection known to man. Nor is there, if peradven- 
ture it do not somewhat exist in the household, any- 
thing that is fit to be type of that which the Spirit of 
God teaches us to be the love of Christianity. For it 
is not a mild and feeble amiableness; it is not a kind 
of charity that forgives men's faults, and has no con- 
science rebounding from evil. It is not merely moral- 
ity, indifferent to everything that is not regular, and 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 9 

without any quick sense of good or evil, of the beauty 
of the one and the odiousness of the other. It is 
large, robust, discriminating, full of rectitude itself 
and the love of rectitude, full of moral discrimination, 
repulsed from evil and attracted to all that is beautiful 
and true and good. It is the whole man attuned to 
God's own nature, and therefore full of sympathy, full 
of kindness, full of fervent well-wishing to all sentient 
creatures. It does not disdain the flitting insect, nor 
flocks and herds, nor the birds that build and sing; 
but it has its full disclosure among men. It is that 
quality which shines out with beneficence on all. 

It asks nothing for itself ; it has no second thought; 
it asks only the liberty of bestowing kindness and 
affection and sympathy and all helpfulness. It sees 
faults, longing to correct them ; it sees sins, that it 
may heal them ; it is the soul's physician going into 
the hospital where men are maimed and are sick, only 
to see how they may be succored and helped. It is 
the soul's whole atmosphere poured forth upon others. 
Thus it is not a faculty ; it is all the faculties and 
forces of the soul in a condition of imparting benefit, 
at any rate well-wishing, to all creatures. And thus it 
is a miniature of God set up in the niche of our soul. 






Love is the pendulum of the universe. 



# ^ 



The love is very vulgar that only thinks and traffics. 
"You love me and I love you." What is that better 



10 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

than, " Here is gold, give me some lace ; here is 
money, give me that picture ? " It is mere trafficking. 
"You don't love me, you don't care anything about 
me, and I'm not going to care anything about you." 
Here are the quarrels of love, here are the dramas writ- 
ten and unwritten, and there are millions more unwrit- 
ten, than ever were written. Here is the scale. Is 
there not a love that is expressed by the Apostle, 
"Though the more I love the less am I loved, I glory 
in that; I know I love more than you do; I know 
that I am not much loved, that makes no difference; 
you may not love me nor care for me, nor sympathize 
with me ; but I love you," It is the power of love with- 
out reciprocation. And the greatest natures have that 
power. They do not love faults or failings, but the 
people that bear them they love. And love takes its 
measure out of the soul from which it comes ; its mag- 
nitude, its purity, and its beauty are determined by the 
lover, not by the recipient. 

Love is the fulfilling of the law. It is the central 
crystallization for character. No matter how strong 
the variant parts of a man's conflicting nature, if once 
they all consent to take the law of love and bow down 
in allegiance to it, you have harmonized the character, 
and the harmonization of it makes it strong by the 
amount of its differences. 

. The love of the mother is but one djop of the ocean 



THE CROWN OF L/FE. Ii 

as compared with the love of the great Father of man- 
kind — infinite, infinite! 

# 

The only slave on God's earth that needs no com- 
passion and pity is the slave of love. 

No man knows true happiness till he has learned 
how to love — how to love not a little, but a great deal; 
how to love not occasionally, as a sweetmeat at a ban- 
quet, but how so to love that he is tied up by it, he is 
in bondage to it, it rules him. 

Great is the power of love. But if this be so where 
the object is unworthy, what must it be where the 
object transcends all conception ; where it is more 
multitudinous in its beauty than are the fields with all 
their flowers in all the seasons ; where every day the 
horizon of his nobleness swings wider; where every 
day there dawns some new star of his virtues and his 
excellence.'* O ! cast away your crowns and your scep- 
ters. There is no palace like the soul. There is no 
coronation like that which love gives and takes when a 
great soul not only has loved, but has loved to redemp- 
tion. If a woman was in early days ill-bred and 
perverted, and has gone wrong, upon compulsion or 
persuasion, and secretly hungering and thirsting after 



12 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

righteousness, is still snared and imprisoned, and fast 
being degraded, but is at last by some kindly ministra- 
tion brought out of temptation, and is learning, grow- 
ing, revolting from every evil thought or feeling, her 
whole horizon clearing from every cloud or taint, ris- 
ing to an unexpected beauty and dignity; and if, in 
some day, royal above every other day, she shall hear 
him say, "Oh! mine elect, I have chosen thee to be 
the companion of my life; thou art mine!" What 
amazement ! Flooded with tears, and paralyzed with 
surprise, she answers, "It cannot be; it cannot be. I 
should be but a blemish to thee." But he replies : " I 
have found thee, I have redeemed thee, and I will con- 
tinue to keep thee; thou art mine." Who can esti. 
mate the wonder of that soul, lifting itself up in loving 
adoration upon him who is worthy to be the object of 
every thought and affection, who has loved her, and 
who has given himself for her, and to her.? 

That is the love of redemption. That is the love of 
the soul that has been found of Christ, and has been 
pardoned and lifted up into life and light. That is 
the love which cries out in a moment of ecstasy, 
"Whom have I in heaven but thee.'* and there is none 
upon earth that I desire beside thee." This is the 
great love of the ransomed soul for Jesus Christ ; and 
out of that experience comes the walking day by day 
in the faith that says, " I know that my Redeemer liv- 
eth ; I know that I am loved of Him, and that I love 
Him with all my heart ; the life that I live in the flesh, 
I live by that faith." Out of such an experience as 
that, what strength springs, what peace, what rejoicing. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 13 

what gladness ! With that, one hardly needs to go to 
heaven ; it is heaven on earth. 

A love, a sentiment, comes as a wave comes, and 
subsides, and rolls back, as a wave rolls into the 
bosom of the great unexhausted* sea. 






Love on earth is as dry husks compared with the 
glory of the ever-living and ever-glowing love of God. 
Love is atonement, and God is love. 






In some natures Love is born of Peace, nourished 
in tranquility, and from the first brings forth joy and 
peace. It knows no struggle, but only gradual devel- 
opment. But in other natures. Love has a controlling 
work to perform before it may rule in peace. Like a 
stream born in the mountains, it hides itself among 
rocks, it is driven over them in foam and fury, it is 
shut up in dark pools, and steals away through ravines 
and cliffs, still gathering power but finding no quiet 
until, far away from its sources, it has fulfilled its 
course; and then at length, its pure waters, flowing 
through flower-breeding meadows, rest in deep lakes, 
where all its agitations are forgotten in deep tranquil- 
ity. Not one star that shone upon it all the way down 



14 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the mountain could reflect again except in torn and 
scattered beams of light. Now every star of heaven is 

at home in its bosom. 

* 

First comes acquaintance — that is May ; then friend- 
ship — that is June; then brother and sisterhood — 
that is July; and then love — that is August; but July 
and August are so much alike that no one can tell 
where one stops and the other begins. 

In a full and large nature, friendliness is but the 
outer court, love is the holy of holies. Into that enters 
only the ordained of God. 

Royalty and Fortune have no light to fill the vault 
of life when love is eclipsed or has gone down. But if 
love be regent every other light may go out and it will 
fill the life with a light that shall make poverty itself 
luminous, and sickness and toil bright and joyous. 

Getting in love is like picking garden flowers in 

the night. You may* get a violet, or you may pick a 

nettle. 

* 

The whole New Testament pivots on the golden 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 15 

point, "Thou shalt love." At twelve o'clock at night, 
from out of a hundied or a thousand steeples goes 
forth the solemn bell, striking the last hours; and 
every one of them strikes twelve — some in tenor tone, 
some in deep, resounding bass, and with every varia- 
tion of pure tone or clangour, but every one of them 
strikes at the hour this one sovereign note, "Love" — 
some one way, some in another, some through emo- 
tion, some organized, some disorganized ; but every 
one of the great truths of the New Testament strikes 
Love. 

You cannot tell the strength of one's love by the 
pleasure which he receives from loving. The test of 
loving is what one is willing to suffer for the sake of 
the object beloved. All deep love takes the object, as 
it were, into its bosom; carries its burdens, or would; 
forgives its sin, or would ; suffers. Any man that has 
nobody to suffer for him in this world is God's orphan 
indeed. 

The sentiment of the soul, the throb of love — 
though it has no voice with which to sing, no language 
with which to orate, no treasure with which to build, 
no hand cunning and curious in carving a structure, 
the simple impulse in the soul of love to God and love 
to men, is not barren nor unfruitful. In the sight of 
God it has tfie chiefest value. 



l6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
* * 



There is no spendthrift like the heart. It does not 
know economy, it will not learn, but gives all, always. 



* 
* * 



Great souls have bled to death because they did not 
know where to bestow the precious gift of love. One 
may be conscious of being worthy to be loved, but still 
more conscious of having wonderful stores of love to 
pour forth, and yet be starved all the while. 



=* 



Christ represents God and is Divine. He came 
forth into this world, not merely to make declarations 
of truth, but to live them ; to put them into the form 
of conduct, so that wherever He went men looking on 
Him might say, " This is the interpretation." 



* 
# * 



I find no difficulty in saying Christ is God, because 
I never undertake to weigh God with scales or to 
measure Him with compasses. 

There are men who have sat down and figured God 
out ; they have figured up the matters of omnipo- 
tence, of omniscence and of omnipresence ; they have 
marked the limits to which Divine power can go ; they 
can tell why God may do so and so, and why He may 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 17 

not do this, that or the other; and I can understand 
how they should raise objections to saying Christ is 
God. 

I draw out from my pocket a little miniature, and 
look upon it, and tears drop from my eyes. What is 
it.'' A piece of ivory. What is on it.'' A face some 
artist has painted there. It is a radiant face. My 
history is connected with it. When I look upon it 
tides of feeling swell in me. Some one comes to me 
and says, ''What is that?" I say, " It is my mother." 
'•Your mother! I should call it a piece of ivory with 
water-colors on it. " To me it is my mother. When 
you come to scratch it and analyze it and scrutinize 
the elements of it, to be sure it is only a sign or dumb 
show, but it brings to me that which is no sign nor 
dumb show. According to the law of my mind, 
through it I have brought back, interpreted, refreshed, 
revived, made potent in me, all the sense of what a 
loving mother was. 

So I take my conception of Christ as he is painted 
in dead letters on dead paper; and to me is inter- 
preted the glory, the sweetness, the patience, the love, 
the joy-inspiring nature of God ; and I do not hesitate 
to say, " Christ is my God ", just as I would not hesi- 
tate to say of that picture, " It is my mother ". 

When, therefore, Christ is presented to me I will not 
put Him in the multiplication table, I will not make 
Him a problem in arithmetic or in mathematics ; I will 
not stand and say, " How can three be one or how can 
one be three.?" I will interpret Christ by the imagina- 
tion and the heart. Then He will bring me a concep- 



i8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

tion of God such as the heavens never, in all their 
glory, declared; such as the earth has never revealed, 
either in ancient or modern times. He reveals to us 
a God whose interest in man is inherent, and who, 
through His mercy 2nd goodness made sacrifices for it. 
God so loved the world that He gave His only begot- 
ten Son to die for it. What is the only begotten Son 
of God? Who knows.'' Who cares to know? That 
His only begotten Son is precious to Him we may 
know, judging from the experience of an earthly 
father ; and we cannot doubt that when He gave 
Christ to come into life, and humble Himself to man's 
condition, and take upon Himself an ignominious 
death. He sacrificed that which was exceedingly dear 
to Him. And this act is a revelation of the feeling of 
God toward the human race. 






I do not measure my God by outwardness, but by 
the substance of the inward life, by wisdom, by love, 
and all the fruit of love ; and if Jesus Christ is not of 
the nature of God, then I have lost all conception of 
what that can possibly be. He represents to me the 
very highest attribute of God. 1 do not count the 
stilling of the waves as being so very Divine, or if it is, 
it is the little finger of God; but when Jesus Christ 
can suffer that other men might not suffer; when He 
developed the idea that God's nature was that of one 
who had rather that He should Himself take the bond- 
age and burden; when He showed paternal feeling 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 19 

beyond father and mother, that had rather suffer in 
the family than that the child should suffer, then I 
begin to say, " Here is love ; here is light ". If the 
questions that I would fain propose are not questions 
to be solved — namely, how He could be God and yet 
man — I remit those questions to theology; and to a 
very large extent theology is the vast abyss into which 
men throw things that they cannot deal with in any 
other way. To me Jesus is the exposition outwardly 
of the inward life of God, and I follow Him every- 
where on earth, and I say, ''This is God, this is God, 
and this is God " ; and I free from my dioughts as one 
frees a weight from the soul, I free the earthly circum- 
stances of Christ's life. And then I say, "This is 
the trait, this is the quality, this is the Divine nature"; 
and then I enthrone it in the Father, I enthrone it in 
the Holy Ghost, and the whole earth doth show forth 
what the centre of the universe is. Yes ; I believe in 
the Divinity of Christ because I believe in God, and 
because in Him alone can I gain any adequate con- 
ception of what is the sum and centre of God himself. 






Therefore I am not turned back from believing in 
the Trinity because I cannot comprehend it. When 
you ask me as to the quo modo, the method, of the 
Trinity, I am obliged to confess that I do not under- 
stand it. But should this be a bar to my going into 
the church? A certain phase of orthodoxy says, 
"You must subscribe to the Trinity, or not come into 



20 THE CROWN- OF LIFE. 

the church ". What is the law on which it proceeds, 
and by which it judges a man ? Is it simphcity? Is 
it transparency? Is it lovableness ? Is it that on 
which the fifth chapter of Matthew is founded ? No. 
Men go into the most unfathomable realms of human 
thought, take the most difficult of all conceivable spec- 
ulations, and make them the condition of church-mem- 
bership ; and if a man believes in them he may be in 
the church, but if he does not believe in them he shall 
not be in the church. 

I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart 
and soul as my Saviour and my hope of everlasting 
life. I believe in Him so that life itself is stained 
through and through to me with Jesus Christ. 



* 



The doctrine of the presence of God everywhere, in 
all, as the one great force that is working in nature 
and in human life, is nowhere so significantly taught 
as by Jesus and recorded by John. He is not a God 
that has invented the world and stands like an engi- 
neer to see how it runs ; not a God afar off, a mechan- 
ical God; not an architectural God, a builder that 
does not live in his own building ; but a God univers- 
ally diffused, to such an extent that wherever there is 
force, there is God behind that force. Though Agnos- 
tic and Atheistic reasoners should rename God, and 
call Him "Force" or "Energy", I care not; if by that 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 21 

they mean, as they must, what we mean by "Jehovah", 
by "Lord", by "God", they can make a name to suit 
themselves. The name is not the thing, but the quali- 
ties that are under it. 

Jesus Christ epitomizes, represents, interprets God 
to us as the central fountain, source and supply of 
transcendent benevolence and love in the universe. 
This intense interest and love in God works to the 
development of every soul toward Him. It is not 
divine indifference. It is not divine good-nature. It 
is not divine passivity. It is a parent's desire for a 
child's development from evil toward goodness, toward 
purity, toward sweetness, toward godliness. God is 
one who is laborious and self-sacrificing, seeking the 
race, not because they are so good, but to make them 
good, stimulating them, inspiring them, and desiring 
above all things else that they shall be fashioned away 
from the animal toward His sonship. That is the 
direction and drift of divine government. 






What art thou, O Sun ? Thou that bringest back 
from captivity the winter day; thou that teaches all 
the dead things in the earth to find themselves again; 
thou that dost drive the night av/ay from the weary 
eyes of watchers , thou that art the universal bounty- 
giver; thou that dost travel endlessly, carrying bene- 
factions immeasurable, illimitable, beyond want and 



22 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

conception of want — thou art the figure that repre- 
sents God ; and God is as much greater in bounty and 
mercy and power than thou art as spirit is greater 
than matter. For the sun is a spark. Around about 
the brow of Him that reigns are suns sparkling as jew- 
els in a crown. What, then, is that God who is accus- 
tomed to speak of himself to us as the Sun of Right- 
eousness, that arises with healing in his beams? 



* 



When you lift the Lord Jesus Christ up before men, 
remember that, with a certain constancy. He is as vari- 
ous as the heavens. We in the temperate zone know 
that during winter and summer the same skies are 
over our heads ; but did you ever notice how the sea- 
sons vary ? No two springs ever walked the earth with 
the same sandals. No two weeks were ever precisely 
the same. No day is the exact copy of any other day. 
The sun, I suppose, never rises as it has risen before. 
I suppose the sun never sets twice alike. That Artist 
of artists, who reaches forth His hands, profuse with 
color, and makes pictures hemispheric, continental, 
never repeats Himself. He paints figures of majesty 
and glory on the sky. He piles clouds in grandeur, 
like mountain ranges, upon the horizon. He wipes 
out the wrinkles of His cloud-painting, and lets the sun 
go down unobscured. The scene is always changing. 
It is never just what it has been, and we forever 
exclaim, *' It is beautiful ! " Now the Sun of Right- 
eousness, Jesus, the Lord, is never one fixed thing. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 23 

There are some men whose God is like the moon as 
we sometimes see it painted on clocks, with a round, 
fixed face, behind which the machinery ticks, ticks, 
ticks, without cessation, and which always looks alike, 
Idolators are they. For the true God is from everlast- 
ing to everlasting the inspirational God, whose thoughts 
win all thoughts, and of whom we are but dying sparks. 
Every heart here has some slight touch of the divine 
Heart, and is but an emanation of God's soul. What 
is He but the sum of all things conceivable, in gentle- 
ness, in sweetness, in justice, in purity, in truth, in 
righteousness, in courage, in self-denial, in winning- 
ness, in heavenliness, in caress, in wisdom of philoso- 
phy, in beauty of poetry, in majesty of eloquence, and 
in magnitude of government? Whatever exercises 
the imagination worthily is possible to our conception, 
because it is in God. And can you keep the image all 
the time.? It never should be the same, nor twice 
alike. It is forever changing, as the sky is forever 
changing — sometimes darkened with storms; some- 
times covered with light, fleecy, floating, island-clouds; 
sometimes clear and tranquil, always varying, and yet 
always substantially the same. Our God changes not, 
in this: that He is holy, that He is blessed in love, 
that He is powerful in government, that He is drawing 
all creation toward Him, even as planets draw the 
tides of the sea toward them ; and yet, after all, when 
you look at Him, so much is there of Him, so little 
can you take in of Him at once, that His attributes 
seem fugitive, and He does not seem to you twice 
alike. So great is He that there are no bounds to His 



24 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

greatness; so blessed is He that there are no terms 
that are adequate to describe Him ; so unfaiHng is He 
that every heart says, "Thine, O God, am I, and Thou 
art mine ". 

God never revealed to man anything of moral or 
spiritual except through the foregoing experiences of 
men in regard to its moral quality. Whatever grows 
thus is the result of the application of the highest and 
the noblest truths to moral consciousness. 



* 



God's nature is not specialized and parceled out. 
God's great attributes are not like legal documents, 
written and sent by post to particular persons, none 
being allowed to take them out of the post-office 
except those whose names are on them. What God is, 
He is to all — or would be, if they would understand 
Him. The God of the whole earth is He. The uni- 
versal Father is He. In Him there is neither Jew nor 
Gentile, bond nor free. All are as one in God. 



# 
# * 



The nature of God is the same to all men, but the 
effects are not the same on all men, because they do 
not all put it to the same uses. The reason why the 
sun produces in one place geraniums, camillias, aza- 
leas, all forms of exquisite flowers, and does not pro- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 25 

duce them in another place, is not in the sun. The 
cause of the difference is in the use to which you put 
the sun. It shines on the south side of my barn ; and 
what does it produce there? A warm spot, where 
chickens and cows gather. It shines on the south 
side of my neighbor's barn : and what does it produce 
there.'' Flowers and grapes. What is the reason of 
the difference? Does the sun change? No; but it is 
put to different uses. It is just the same sun, with 
just the same vivific power to all ; but its effects are 
different when it is differently employed. In one 
man's hands it amounts to nothing, because he does 
not make any use of it ; but in another man's hands it 
amounts to a great deal, because he does make use of 
it, and makes it do a great deal for him. 






As to loving a God that is inconceivable, unthink- 
able, unknowable — it is preposterous. A morning- 
glory wants something that is solid to run up on. It 
wants to twine ; but it will not twine on a shadow. 
It must have something that is substantial to twine on. 
Human nature, too, must have something substantial 
to twine on. And if you proclaim an immanent divin- 
ity, a kind of Soul-of-the-World, that has reason, though 
not anything that we understand by reason, that has 
justice, though not anything that we understand by 
justice, and that has goodness, though not anything 
that we understand by goodness, you will surely throw 
men into hopeless confusion! If when I say, "I love 



26 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the truth", there is no correspondence between my 
sense of truth and truth as it exists in God, then the 
term "truth" is perpetually binding and enslaving me. 



* 
* ^ 



How beautiful art Thou, O Lord our God, that fill- 
est our hearts with blessings, pourest the beautiful 
light day by day upon the earth, and floodest the 
heavens with Thy glory! And in all seasons of the 
year. Thine hand is still seen — Thine hand that cre- 
ates beauty; that adorns strength with beauty. Thou 
throwest the robe thereof over the earth. Thy ways 
are wondrous. Thy paths drop fatness. Thou art 
known in the heavens, and Thou art known upon the 
earth, and yet Thou art unknown ; and unsearchable 
art Thou. We see only Thine outward manifestations. 
The recesses of Thy love, the depths of Thy being, 
who can explore.-* Better art Thou than our best 
thoughts. More noble and beautiful art Thou than 
the highest imaginations of our most luminous hours. 
No mind hath thought Thee out. No tongue hath 
spoken Thee. No pen hath described Thee. Thine 
excellence cannot be measured. Thou art past find- 
ing out. 

God is the heart and centre of the whole universe, 
and is lifting up men on His heart and carrying them 
in their weakness, planning for them, forbearing with 
them, solicitous of them, playing the universal father 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 27 

and the universal mother; suffering for men, not once 
in Gethsemane, not again on Calvary — these are sim- 
ply types, specimens of that which has been going 
on — "the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of 
the world" — the Being that is most burdened, and 
the Being that suffers solicitude — not degrading suf- 
fering, not weakening suffering, but love suffering, that 
is full of gladness as well as suffering. For oftentimes 
it is the case that suffering is the sub-base of the 
organ underlying the grandeur of all the upper notes, 
and the beauty and the sweet tone of the instrument 
would be comparatively thin were it not that great 
undertone all the way through. And so it is with the 
nature of God. 

My God is not one that looks out upon the universe 
with the short, hasty eye of time ; He dwells in eter- 
nity. God has time enough for anything and every- 
thing. The revolving ages that seem to us endless in 
the past and endless in the future are as yesterday to 
God. 

He is a fast workman ; and I believe that when we 
shall come and appear in Zion the whole mighty prob- 
lem of time will roll out, and in a perfect diapason of 
grandeur and love and joy, mankind will sing, "God 
is love and time benevolence ". 






How slowly do we understand Thee ! How dark 



28 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

are the simplest counsels of God to us ! How often, 
m the night, do we cry out with the pangs of fear, 
because there is no answer to our yearnings ! How 
often are we alone, and yet never alone! How often 
are we crushed under burdens which have beneath 
them, if we would, the power of omnipotence ! How 
often do we attempt to stand, and fall when it is in our 
power to lean against Thee, so that nothing can over- 
throw us ! 

We know that Thou art to be found by those that 
humble themselves, and yet we refuse to go down, in 
our wisdom, and are forever building ourselves up 
in that pride which God cannot bless ; and we are 
vagrants running to and fro, as if there had been no 
life before ours, no knowledge, no experience, no rec- 
ord of ways of righteousness, no faith of God, no gov- 
ernment, and no providence. We care not. We shut 
our eyes and our ears, and go groping on to repeat the 
endless experiment of disaster. When shall the light 
pierce these dark eyes .'' When shall we have the sim- 
plicity of children, and believe in Thee .'' When shall 
we find our strength, our rest, our hope, and our life 
in God. 

We have not come to Thee, our Father, simply 
because without Thee we perish. There is something 
that longs for Thee within us. There is the voice that 
will not be hushed. There is the soul that is sick 
without Thee, and that is homesick without assurance 
of heaven. There is the memory of all Thy past good- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 29 

ness. There is the memory of our own struggles upon 
which Thou didst place the victory. There is the 
memory of our defeats, and of our dungeon darkness 
which Thou didst visit. There is the memory of that 
peace which passeth all understanding, and which 
hath come to us. Even as the dove came and sat 
upon our Master, so upon us hath come the heavenly 
dove. As they that walk forth from winter toward the 
summer, and remember again all the things that are 
coming, and all the sweet smell of the field, and all the 
unrolling leaves, and all the fragrance of the quick- 
coming flowers that are before them, though they have 
been hidden long; so when we turn toward Thee from 
the winter and darkness of our earthly life, and we 
remember again what things have been ; and Thou 
seemest to us most glorious, because of Thy good- 
ness, Thy mercy, Thy gentleness, and Thy tenderness. 






No man can learn his God out of a book. Out 
of nothing but his own experience can he learn it. 
Every man who has a God that is more than an empty 
name, has one that has been framed out of the actual 
conceptions and thoughts and feelings of his own 
nature. Little children fashion a God, sometimes full 
of fantasy, and sometimes full of sweet beauty ; and it 
is their God, and all the God there is to them. Every 
man must take that which is in him, and for himself 
frame a name that is to him God. When you read in 
God's word, of justice, what you know of justice 



30 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

and what you think about justice will determine' what 
that element is, as it enters into the framing of your 
God. If God be "holy and just and good", if He be 
" long suffering " and "plenteous in mercy", what do 
these names taken out of the sacred Scripture mean? 
To a bad man very little ; to a good man, a great deal 
more ; to a sainted man, still more. And if any man 
has a conception of God that touches his heart, and 
calls out his fervor and his self-denial, and makes him 
heroic, and fills him with joy, and with a wholesome 
sorrow, it is because he has the power given him to 
fashion a God that to him means something, in the 
same sense that his own experience means something. 
If you do not know how to love, you cannot under- 
stand what love is in God. If you are bound hand 
and foot in utter selfishness, you cannot love a God 
that has magnanimity and disinterestedness. If you 
live for the flesh, you cannot exhale the sweet perfume 
of the spirit, as the fragrance of the flower rises above 
the form of the blossom. If you have no bright 
nature, how can you understand the ineffable, the spir- 
itual, the infinite. By as much as God becomes possi- 
ble and actual to you, by so much you have been 
transformed into that by w^hich you now project, and 
by the imagination refine and give infinite proportions 
to — what you call your God. 



* 
* * 



As children away from home comfort themselves in 
the thought of father and mother, so we, while exiled 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 31 

from heaven, long to have the thought of Thee so near 
and so dear to us that we can run home in imagina- 
tion, and be no more exiled, but ever present with 
the Lord. 

We have a God that seeks men. You do not find 
Him, but He finds you. As a lamb is caught in the 
thorns and thickets, so men are caught in snares. 
And as one mired cannot go after relief, but must 
have relief come to him, so God searches for men that 
are snared. He goes out to find them. He is a 
Father. He is more than a Father — a God — for 
fatherhood is only one bright conception that sprang 
from the soul of God. 

God clasps every soul that He once takes, and takes 
it for good or for bad. The wedding between the soul 
and God is one that knows no divorce, either here or 
hereafter. 

Our God is not greater than we by the things in 
which He differs from us, so much as by His similari- 
ties to us. He is like us ; but that likeness goes on 
augmenting. Love in God, for instance, is what love 
is in us ; but that love which in us is but a throb, in 
Him augments to a volume inconceivable in our per- 
sonality. Human nature, carried one way, runs toward 
the animal and the earthy. Carried in the other way, 



32 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

it runs toward spirit — toward God. The divine Being 
is not some mysterious and glorious other Being, but 
an infinite and inconceivably perfect manhood of the 
same sort as ours. When we see Him, we shall see 
Him as He is, and shall see ourselves more clearly in 
Him than we ever saw ourselves in ourselves. 






God is the consummation of everything that is 
noble, beautiful and rare. Every quality that excites 
admiration in a generous or noble mind exists in God 
in infinite proportions and developments ; and the 
growth which you have made is manifested by the 
receptivity which is in you when the name of God 
is disclosed. Not only is it "a name above every 
name", but it is a name that should bring to you 
thousands and thousands of the rarest and sweetest 
and noblest associations. 



* 



Oh, ye weary ! why are you weary when others rest? 
Oh, ye sick! why do you suffer when others are 
healed ? Oh, starving and hungering ! there is bread 
enough. Oh, dying ! there is life for you. Oh, de- 
sponding and despairing! look up and rejoice. A 
great light has arisen to those that sit in the region 
and shadow of death. Come to Christ who loves you, 
who is drawing you, and who has said to each one of 
you, " I will never leave thee nor forsake ". 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 33 






No man can have another man's Christ — if you will 
not misunderstand my words, and pervert my mean- 
ing. As a physician is who stands over you in sick- 
ness, so is Christ Jesus. What to your thought a 
teacher is who labors with you according to your igno- 
rance, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. The prime con- 
sideration with every man is, "What is Christ to my 
soul.?" 






Be not Thou strange unto us, O Thou Saviour of 
our souls. Be present to our faith and to our secret 
apprehension. And then the rock will be soft ; then 
the storm will be gentle ; then sorrow itself will wing 
away. Be Thou present. Lord Jesus. There can be 
no trouble to the soul that rests in Thee. May we 
have this steadfast faith and this abiding hope; and 
at last may we be with Thee, which is better than life. 



* 

* ^ 



In the earlier period of Christian experience most 
men have a Christ that is extremely variable, not in 
the best sense of that term. It is a Christ of cloudy 
days, differing from the Christ of sunshiny days. It 
is the Christ of victorious hours, and a very different 
one from the Christ of Gethsemane. But little by lit- 
tle as we go on in life, we begin to find a unity in our- 
selves, so that at last the experiences that seem widely 



34 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

separate and scattered — all the elements of the dye- 
house, all the elements of the wool or the silk, all the 
elements of the loom, begin to come together, and are 
woven into one fabric, with a certain unity of design, 
in the loom of faith. And as we go on in life by faith 
in Christ Jesus our Lord, his brow grows broader, and 
the eye more benign, and the lips more sweet of love; 
and there comes to be that which does not change 
much, and the soul says, " I know in whom I have 
trusted." Although there may be evanescent changes 
here and there, we come to have a Christ that abides 
with us in all substantial elements. Then the soul 
rests, and says, " The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall 
not want". He leads us by the still waters and in 
green pastures. When we walk through the valley of 
the shadow of death. He is with us. 






The truth remains the same, that every man's effi- 
cient Christ must have had such a relation to his per- 
sonality and his history that in the most literal and 
intense sense of that term he can say, *' Christ in me; 
my Christ". It cheats nobody. It takes Christ away 
from nobody. He belongs to me in many special 
respects; for nobody has had my struggles, nobody 
has had my temptations, nobody has had my deliv- 
erances, nobody has borne my griefs, but He and 
I together. Nobody has probed the darkness as I 
have; but He was my morning Star. Nobody has 
felt the cross, the yoke, and the burden that I have 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 35 

felt, or that you have felt each of you separately, indi- 
vidually and personally; and no one else can feel 
them except in my place, or in your place ; and it is 
ail these ministrations to you — the coming in mercy, 
the coming in judgment, the coming in reproof, the 
coming in encouragement and hope, or the coming in 
inexpressible love — that constitute Him to you some- 
thing that He cannot be to anybody else. 



* 



It is the hope of my life, the longing of my life, to 
bring forth such a view of the character of God in 
Christ Jesus that every poor soul in the world shall be 
able to feel "He is mine, just as the sun is mine". 
And who owns the sun? The magnolia, beautiful, 
pure, with cups that diffuse incense to the very stars 
by night and the sun by day ? Oh, yes ; but not one 
whit more than the violet that grows near it. Who 
owns the sun ? The bird that flies with brilliant plum- 
age on every side? Certainly; but not one particle 
more than the barn-yard hen without a feather of 
beauty about her. Who owns the sun ? The radiant 
beauties of the world ? The toad, too. The sea is 
full of creatures that own the sun, and the air full of 
insects that own the sun, and the earth full of worms 
that own the sun, and everything that needs the sun 
owns it. And who needs God, and who owns God? 
Whoever wants Him ; He is there for all. Whosoever 
will, let him come and take of God's swelling flood 
freely. It is not like an earthly substance that can be 



36 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 

wasted by using it; it is the eternal existence of God's 
love. All those apparent contradictions and cacoph- 
onies that exist in human life, by and by, when the 
evil is removed, we shall see that there is a use in 
them; and, as in some of Beethoven's symphonies, 
there are passages that rasp the ear and that quiver 
the very foundations on which we stand, but are like 
gorges, which open out into valleys of beauty, made 
more beautiful by the contrast; so, by and by, in 
another life, we shall see that the things that in this 
life seemed such hard things were working out results 
that were beneficent and beautiful, past language. 






Nothing is so exquisite in you, nothing is so multi- 
tudinous in you, nothing is so venomous and painful 
in you, in the way of moral temptations, that it has not 
had some part in the experience of Christ, so that it is 
interpreted to Him perfectly. And every sigh, every 
groan, every aspiration, every thought, that will not 
even look up, but that, looking down, despairs — God 
knows them all, and knows them quick; for they 
bound, as it were, against His heart, bringing up sug- 
gestions of trials in His own self. 



* 



There is no experience among us that goes far, 
compared to the distance and route it travels, when 
judged by the Divine and the Infinite. The chord in 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 37 

our souls is short and stubborn. The chord in the 
Divine soul is infinite ; and its vibrations are immeas- 
urably beyond any experience of our own. Sorrow in 
us is of the same kind as sorrow in God ; and yet, as 
compared with the sorrow of God, human sorrow is 
but a mere puff. Love moves in no such circles as it 
does in God. In Him it is never dimmed by any such 
glooms of fear, nor sullied by any such smoke of 
passions, as it is in us. It is not in Jesus, as in us, a 
mere household taper, burning when sheltered, and at 
that throwing its light less and less strongly the more 
the space is augmented. God is a sun, and His love 
goes out like sunlight, infinite, inexhaustible, not meas- 
ured like a vintner's cup, to a precise quantity, but, 
without measure, overflowing as the waters ; unfathom- 
able as the ocean ; all persuasive as the light and the 
heat. 

Jesus Christ's heart is the nest of the soul. Scared 
by any trouble, by any disappointment, by any sorrow, 
pursued as birds by hawks, there is a refuge. There 
He will give you rest. " Take my yoke upon you, and 
my burden, and you shall find rest unto your souls. 
My yoke is easy, my burden is light." Whoever puts 
himself in agreement with the heart, thought and feel- 
ing of God as manifested in Jesus Christ, has, in all 
his sorrow and trouble, a refuge in the Saviour which 
never fails. The greater the darkness the clearer the 
light; the greater the assault the surer the defence; 
the greater the sorrow the greater the rest. The heart 



38 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

which knows how to put itself into the trust and love 
of the Lord Jesus Christ is not released from suffer- 
ing; but it nevertheless can say, with the psalmist, 
"God hath dealt bountifully with me; return unto thy 
rest, O my soul 1 " 

Our strength is in God ; our comfort is in Him ; but 
He must be a God that the broken-hearted and the 
consciously imperfect can walk with without being 
driven by fear, or kept under the pressure of perpetual 
shame. That God is revealed in Jesus Christ. 



* 
* * 



I would not say that God turns the brightest side of 
His nature to those who have stumbled and fallen, but 
in all those ways in which men are harassed by con- 
demning conscience, by a sense of mistake that might 
have been avoided ; in all their struggles under great 
sorrows and bereavements; in all those sorrows which 
tug at life like the racking teeth of a double saw ; in 
those sorrows which come in a rain of distress ; in all 
the alarms of life, in all the seductions of business, in 
all the burdens that come upon men — over against 
them stands a Saviour adapted to the special sorrow 
that they themselves carry. He is all in all; that is, 
in every part of a man's life, and in every special 
trouble there is an aspect of God in Jesus Christ that 
mitigates the special trouble, that is adapted to the 
special want; and the revelation of God's love in Jesus 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 39 

Christ is a revelation that should enable every man 
who puts trust in Him, and accepts Him as the Guide 
and Captain of his salvation, to rise higher. It lifts 
him in the time of his emergency, shelters him in 
danger, guides him in his bewilderments and his per- 
plexities, and brings him to that rest which does not 
depend upon conscious purity, but depends upon a 
sense of God's love, and upon trust and faith in Him. 

* 

Have you any Christ? No two conceptions of 
Christ are alike. It is vain for you to look over to 
this one and that one. Have you any Christ that car- 
ries your characteristics in it ? Have you a biography 
that He expresses to your memory or thought? Has 
He been to you a Revealer, a Sustainer and a Helper 
in time of need ? 

Have you ever laid your head, as John did, on the 
bosom of your Saviour? Perhaps you have striven 
after Madame Guyon's Christ, or after the Christ of 
Augustine, or after the Christ that Wesley found, or 
after the Christ of some minister who has helped you, 
or after the Christ of some mother, sister, wife, or 
friend; but every man's Christ must come out of his 
own soul. 

Is Christ in us — in every one of us? Something of 
His cradle and His poverty; something of the youth 
and the toil of the young Jesus ; something of the con- 



if© THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

flicts and the beggary of His life ; something of His 
bitter trial; something of His Gethsemane and some- 
thing of His death — out of these has your Christ 

sprung ? 

# 

"I am the way," said Christ, as if He had laid Him- 
self down along the rocky, flint-cutting road, and said 
to men, "Walk on me, I am your road". And the 
whole spirit and temper of the Scriptures is on behalf 
of those that are low down, to lift them up. 



# 
* * 



The vision of Christ that comes to you through your 
personal experience is higher than the judgment of 
any philosophy; higher than any result that you can 
make by analysis or by recomposition — by synthesis. 
When out of your soul-needs, and the revelation of 
your soul-experiences, you find before you the constant 
picture of this thought, and the joy of your soul, do 
not undertake to repaint it by the reason. Let it float 
before you in all its beautiful hues, and in all its 
pristine forms. Let your Christ be the disembodied 
Christ of the imagination, bearing to your various ne- 
cessities patience, or gentleness, or courage, or joy, or 
hope, which you shall see reflected from His benign 
face. 

A man is privileged to have a Christ that seems to 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 41 

him to have been born out of the elements of necessity 
in him. It is "Christ in you, the hope of glory", 
formed out of your necessities, out of your yearnings, 
out of your aspirations, out of your sorrows, out of 
your joys, out of your temptations. It is the Christ 
that has been around about you through the series of 
your days and years, over against every facet of the 
diamond soul; so that your individuality is inseparably 
wrapped up with your conception of the Jesus that is 
yours. It may be less glorious than another's, or it 
may be more glorious than another's; but it is yours. 
It is Christ as seen through your soul's inspection, and 
as revealed to you by all the spiritual and temporal 
necessities of your history and your life. It is born in 
you an infant, growing up in you, as it were, through 
its youth ; that is, your youth of knowledge, becoming 
regent, and at last triumphant in you, so that you can 
say, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? There is 
none on earth that I desire beside Thee." 






There was not in Jesus Christ one single power that 
throbs and vibrates in the human soul that was not 
tried beyond anything that we are ever tried with in 
this mortal life. 

Christ's mission was to reconcile men to God — not 
to reconcile God to men. He came to bring out a 
power which should cause men to lift their eyes and 



42 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

see that whatever was romantic in love on earth, that 
whatever was faithful in affection in the household, 
that whatever sacrifice there was in love, that whatever 
there was of kindness and mercy, was the interior 
nature of God. There stands the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, blazing with this one radiant interpretation : that 
God so loved the world that He gave His only begot- 
ton Son to die for it. 

One drop of Christ's blood is worth more than the 
round globe, though it were one orbicular diamond; 
and souls are God's jewels. 






If I lose everything else, I will stand on the sover- 
eign idea that God so loved the world that He gave 
His own Son to die for it rather than it should die. 
To tell me that back of Christ there is a God who for 
unnumbered centuries has gone on creating men and 
sweeping them like dead flies — nay, like living ones — 
into hell, is to ask me to worship a being as much 
worse than the conception of any mediaeval devil as 
can be imagined; but I will not worship the devil, 
though he should come dressed in royal robes and sit 
on the throne of Jehovah. I will not worship cruelty. 
I will worship Love — that sacrifices itself for the good 
of those that err, and that is as patient with them as a 
mother is with a sick child. With every power of my 
being will I worship as God such a being as that. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, 43 






Do you ask me if I believe in the atonement of 
Christ. I believe in the atonement of God. I believe 
that there is no other atonement but that everlasting 
nature of God which spares the weak, which pardons 
the guilty, which draws men out of themselves, which 
is long-suffering, but which says, " There shall forever 
be a difference between truth and lies, between right 
and wrong"; which says, "Forever and forever selfish- 
ness shall be painful, and benevolence shall be blessed; 
and I will maintain that which is high and noble, 
and will bring the race up to it by stripes, by chastise- 
ments, by tears, by suffering, by long trial ; and I will 
bear and forbear with them, never forgetting that I am 
striving for the glorious enfranchisement of the ani- 
mal into manhood, and for the elevation of manhood 
into the sonship of God; and I will see that men shall 
not be contented and untroubled in wrong ways. I 
will smite and punish ; but the smiting and the pun- 
ishing will be for the sake of making my love manifest. 
Whom I love I chasten, and I scourge every son that 
I receive." 

The whole earth would have dwindled and gone out 
if it was not for one glowing spot — Calvary. For 
that mountain it shall stand forever and glowing 
through all space, shine as a mighty Jewel that God 
hath set as a memorial of His everlasting love. 



44 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






God so loved the world that he gave his Son to die 
for it. There was no such palliation or placation 
needed in the Divine disposition as required any sac- 
rifice of Christ Jesus. If the revelation of God him- 
self in the mercy, in the wisdom, in the purity, in the 
truth, in the love of Jesus Christ ; if the life and suffer- 
ings and death of Jesus Christ wrought out such a 
view of God as to make His goodness, His grandeur, 
and His glory more apparent to the comprehension of 
men, and so more attractive than it was before — that 
is reason enough for the coming of Jesus Christ, that 
is atonement enough. Any view of the Divine nature 
that makes Him first angry, and then placated, is blas- 
phemous. God's brooding love, not God's irritable 
law, is the doctrine of the Bible. God avenging is 
not the doctrine of the Bible. God loving and saving 
is the doctrine of the Bible. 






It is time, I think, that we should say not that we 
are saved by the blood of Christ, but that the blood of 
Christ represents the love and devotedness of Christ, 
by whose sufferings we are saved. Is not Divine sym- 
pathy more potent upon men's thoughts than blood ? 
Are we forever to be saturating the popular imagina- 
tion with this physical symbol which was meant to 
carry us up to spiritual ideas ? Are we to abandon 
the spiritual idea, and go back to the barbarity and 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 45 

captivity of the external and the physical form of the 
symbol ? I believe that we are saved by the blood of 
Christ, because I believe the blood of Christ signifies 
His love. It is an expression to show the utmost fidel- 
ity and love, and willingness of suffering in love, for 
the moral inspiration and redemption of mankind. 






As the Interpreter of God's great love, as the means 
of opening to our understanding what is the atoning 
power of God's heart and disposition, Jesus Christ 
came into this world ; and it behooved Him to be like 
unto His brethren; and he accepted the necessity. It 
behooved Him to be a man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief, because all great men who have given 
themselves for the good of the world have been men 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Groans have 
echoed since the world began, and will echo till the 
end of time. Lamentations, sorrows in every form, 
prevailed from the first, and were to prevail until the 
last ; and it behooved Christ to be like unto His breth- 
ren. He joined Himself to the human family, and 
lived, and died, and rose again ; and, dying and living 
for us, as our Instructor, as our Exemplar, as our 
Leader, as the Pacifier of rebellious human nature, 
and as the Interpreter, by His life, by His teaching, 
by His death, of the reconciliation of men to God, He 
has a claim upon every human soul to whom the 
knowledge comes. None of us have a right to live to 



46 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

ourselves, but all of us are under obligation to live to 
Him who redeemed us by His precious blood. 



* 
* * 



God is so infinite, and in quality so exquisite, that 
He could only be known by a representation of Him- 
self, and He took out from the bosom of His love His 
Son Jesus. 

O throne of iron, from which have been launched 
terrible lightnings and thunders that have daunted 
men ! O throne of crystal, that has coldly thrown out 
beams upon the intellect of mankind ! O throne of 
mystery, around about which have been clouds and 
darkness ! O throne of Grace, where He sits regnant 
Who was my brother. Who has tasted of my lot, Who 
knows my trouble, my sorrow, my yearning and long- 
ing for immortality ! O Jesus, crowned, not for Thine 
own glory, but with power of love for the emancipa- 
tion of all struggling spirits 1 Thou art my God — my 
God! 

Above our father and our mother, above our chil- 
dren and our companions, above our truest friends, 
there rises the face divine of Jesus, our Lord, our 
soul's Saviour, Who found us, and taught us to find 
Him ; Who loves us w4th an unfathomable love ; Who 
gave Himself for us ; and Who redeemed us from 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 47 

death, from sin, and from all impurity, that He might 
make us His own, waiting for us, our Mediator, our 
Intercessor, our Forerunner. All that the soul needs 
in its mission in this life, and its mortal march. Thou 
doest, O Lord, our Saviour, for us. 

Jesus Christ came to make known to the human 
race, in tones that will vibrate to the last centuries of 
time, the central truth that God is supreme and sover- 
eign, not because He is perfect, and not because He is 
lifted above care and trouble, but because He has in 
Him a heart and soul that feels for sin, for infirmities, 
for sorrows, for mistakes; for all that goes to wreck 
and ruin. Such was the Divine nature, brought to us 
in a language which we can understand, through the 
incarnation of the divine Spirit in Jesus Christ, and 
revealing to us, not something gotten up as an epi- 
sode, not something interjected upon the course of 
time, but that God was the eternal Father of ages, and 
that He was a Being whose sympathies were vital, 
universal, exquisite, and full of stimulating, rescuing 
power. And for the ages and ages yet to come, the 
eternal sovereign is to be named Father ; and He earns 
and deserves the title, by having transcendently and 
infinitely more compassion and sympathy and suffer- 
ing power for those who are in peril than any earthly 
parent has. 

I have been asked, " Do you believe in the Atone- 



48 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

inent ? " Which ? I believe in mine ; I believe that 
my God has made known to me in Jesus Christ His 
atonement for the sins of the world, and that it inheres 
in the Divine nature and overpours and fills time, and 
will fill all eternity. I believe that but for this redeem- 
ing love of God in Jesus Christ no man would ever 
rise higher than the vegetable or the animal, and that 
it is the inspiration of the world. He impletes the 
heart, the soul with Himself, and He is all in all. I 
believe in Jesus Christ — that is the whole thing. 



* 



O Lord, forgive our want of trust, and clothe us in 
the spirit of childlike faith and confidence. May all 
Thy words seem to us Yea and Amen ! And we pray 
that Thou wilt grant that in time to come we may 
dwell more by the power of faith. With Thee above 
the cloud — above the storm — above the reach of the 
fowler, and of his arrow — there, under the shadow of 
Thy wings, may we find perfect peace. 






Faith that can be unsettled by the access of light 
and knowledge had better be unsettled. 






It is faith that does things in this world. When 
men pray, believing, their prayers are effectual. The 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 49 

fact is, praying is very much like chestnut-gathering 
among boys. They go out with their little clubs, and 
throw them into the trees, but the chestnuts do not 
fall, and they go away thinking there are none; but 
, the frost in the night loosens them, and they come 
rattling down upon the ground, and the boys wonder 
where they came from. They were in the trees all the 
time, but they did not reach them with their little 
clubs. You have got to throw high enough and strong 
enough, and then the results will come rattling down. 
Men, for the things which they solicit at the hand of 
God, throw little prayers, and do not throw them 
above their heads, and oftentimes not as high as that; 
and then they get together and wonder if prayers of 
faith are of any consequence, and question whether 
there is any such thing as a prayer of faith. 






Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is not any mythical 
state ; it is the enthusiasm of a follower who reveres 
his leader. It is the rapture of one who looks up con- 
fidingly toward a beloved master. It is the personal 
effluence of a soul toward Christ under the conscious- 
ness of its relationship to Him. 

* * 

God says, "Here is your duty for to-day, and the 
means with which to do it. To-morrow you will find 
remittances and further directions; next week you 



50 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

will find other remittances and other directions; next 
month you will find others; and next year still others." 



* 



There is no place where God puts you, where it is 
not your duty to turn round, and say, " How shall I 
perfume this place, and make it fragrant as the honey- 
suckle and the violet, and beautiful as the rose?" In 
this world you are to perform the great duties of spirit- 
ual, moral and physical life in the place where you are. 






If you go out in the fields, and should want to 
gather nettles, take care how you handle them ; if you 
grasp them firmly they will not hurt you, but touch 
them lightly, and you will find )our hands stung all 
over. Just so with duty ; grasp it hard and the sting 
is gone. 

* 

If your work be mean or disagreeable, let your relig- 
ion weave over it a network of flowers, beautify it 
with piety, but never desert it; that sacrifice is more 
acceptable to your God than incense and burnt- 
offering. 

Every duty, however mean, should be the altar on 
which you place your offering to God ; all your daily 



THE CROWX OF LIFE. 51 

labors should be as acts of devotion, and so your life 
would become one entire consecration. 






What if the path be thorny ; it is but a little while. 
What if the flints do cut; it is but a short passage. 



* 



Providence never puts a man on any path of duty 
without making provision for his safety. 






Duties which were harsh and acrid at the first, if • 
boldly undertaken and consistently borne, become rud- 
dy to the eye, fragrant to the smell, sweet to the taste. 
Duty carries the wine of strength and inspiration 

within itself. 

* 

He that is false to present duty, breaks one thread 
in the great fabric; sometime the plan will be found. 
Then he may have forgotten the breaking of the 
thread and imagine that troubles spring out of the 

ground. 

* 

If God makes saints of any of us he will have to put 
us in the very lowest class to begin. No one can be a 



52 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

candidate for saintship unless he is willing cheerfully 
to perform the duties that fall to his lot in the place 
where he is. When he has completely filled that place 
the call will assuredly be heard, "Come up higher". 
We must rise as a seed rises. The acorn is quite con- 
tent to be only an acorn, it is content to go out of 
sight, and hide its roots where no eye can see. If you 
want eminent experiences, be willing to begin at the 
lowest room. 

There is no avoirdupois in duty. When duties are 
powerfully attracted by the willing soul within, they 
have no weight. 



* 
* * 



Christ identifies Himself with the weakness, and the 
bitterest trials of life, and the performance of duties in 
these places is a flower of remembrance pressed in 
the book of life, never to be lost. Go through the 
garden of your life and see what flowers you can pre- 
sent to God. If you have the fairest and most exqui- 
site blossoms, gather and present them ; they will be 
graciously accepted. If you have them not, then take 
the best you have, though coarse. God will not reject 
nor throw them out. If you have not even garden 
flowers, go and seek chickweed and little humble dust- 
covered blossoms by the wayside. God will take 
them since they are the best you have. But go search 
again, if you cannot find even wayside weeds, are you 
willing to thrust your hand into the thorn bush and 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. ' 53 

among nettles, for the sake of making a present to 

Christ — and go to Him and say, "Lord Jesus, I have 

but these". He will look on the wounded, lacerated 

hand, and He that wore the crown of thorns for you 

will take the gift and press it to His bosom, saying, 

" My child, you did this for my sake ; the love they 

manifest makes them sweeter far than most beautiful 

flowers". 

* 

Christ incarnates Himself again for every one of us 
in those duties which are most painful or irksome for 
us to perform, that, instead of a motive derived from 
the work itself, we may do it as unto Him. 






Sinai may smoke; but let Calvary sigh and say, 
"Father", and Calvary is the mightier of the two. 



* 

* * 



You might, by the north wdnd, throw the convolvu- 
lus, the morning-glory, the queen of flowers, prostrate 
along the ground; but it is only when the warm sun 
gives it leave that it twines upward about that which 
is to support it, and blesses it a thousand fold by its 
efflorescence all day long. The terrors of the Lord 
may dissuade men from evil ; but it is the warm shin- 
ing of the heart of God that brings men toward His 
goodness and toward Him. 



54 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Fear never works through the inward nature to 
goodness, but upon the outward in conduct. It may 
produce a dread of wrong, but never a yearning for 
right. 






Do not think you do God honor when you go, bowed 
down in fear and trembling, before Him. He seems to 
say, " Why, why, with averted face do you treat me as 
if I were your master? I have nothing in the universe 
to which you are not heir — joint heir with Christ, 
your elder brother." That one word, "Father", trans- 
fers everything to your possession. 



* 



Religion is harmonious human nature. It includes 
every element which manhood includes. It is whole- 
someness of soul. It is manhood on a higher plane. 






Many persons have an idea that religion is a policy 
of insurance against future fire, and if once they have 
paid in, why, that has settled it, and it will stand. 






Religion is character, it is permanence in a man's 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 55 

own nature, it is a new life, it is being born again and 
built up on a higher plane; and when a man has just 
enough education to be fretting because he has no 
more, just enough to keep awake in him his con- 
science, his fears, his dreads, I will not say he had 
better have none, but I will say that he does not know 
nor can he know what the full fruition of God's Spirit 
in the human soul is, for if religion is worth anything 
it is worth everything. 






Natural religion is generally considered as poor 
stuif. Imported is thought more of than home-made 
— broadcloth proves better than linsey-woolsey. The 
church thinks that it will not do to make religion too 
easy ; folks might take it up of themselves. 






Secret religion is good and necessary; secreted 
religion is mean. 



* 

* * 



Religion is simply right living. In both Old and 
New Testaments it is called Righteousness. It begins 
as a seed. It develops as a growth. It is relative 
to the individual characteristics, to the age, the insti- 
tutions, the whole economy of life. 



56 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Your true religious life consists in standing where 
God has put you, and exercising Christian qualities. 
It consists in showing pity where pity is called for ; in 
manifesting patience where patience is required ; in 
exhibiting gentleness where gentleness is needed. It 
consists in forbearing with others ; in bearing others' 
burdens; in not being easily provoked; in thinking no 
evil, when evil things are brought to you; in loving 
where other men would hate; in doing where others 
would sit still. In other words, as it is indispensable 
that the mathematician should make an application of 
his problem, so it is necessary that the theory of 
religion should be applied to life. 



* 

^ * 



No man has more religion than he lives. 

Creeds are not religion ; philosophy is not religion ; 
knowledge is not religion. The right conduct of a 
man in his physical life is a part of it; his right con- 
duct in social relations is another part of it; his right 
conduct in relation to God and the spiritual future, is 
another and higher part of it; and a man has just so 
much religion as he is enabled to develop in all these 
different relations of his mortal life. 



* 
* * 



Men use religion just as they use buoys and life- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 57 

preservers ; they do not intend to navigate the vessel 
with them, but they keep just enough of them on hand 
to float into a safe harbor when the storm comes up, 
and the vessel is shipwrecked ; and it is only then that 
they intend to use them. I tell you, you will tind air- 
holes in all such life-preservers as that. 



* 



Religion is the building of a manhood upon the 
model of Jesus Christ. It is not doing this, or doing 
that. It is attempting to set up in ourselves the king- 
dom of heaven, which is said to be within us. It is 
not a thing, a proportion, a quality, a force, but man- 
hood, man-building — that is the very genius of the 
Gospel. 

The old theology is from the forge, from law, from 
government among men ; the New Testament theol- 
ogy takes its centre in the Fatherhood of God and in 
the Divine Love. 






True religion is like fruit; when the sun has turned 
the acid juices of it to sweetness, the fruit is deli- 
cious; but in the early season it is not — it is sour and 
bitter. There are thousands of Christian men and 
women that are perpetually eating green fruit. 



58 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Many a man's religion is like his Sunday clothes, 
which he takes out of the closet very carefully on Sun- 
day morning, puts them on, brushes them all down, 
and looks at himself in the glass, and feels as though 
he was presentable; and in his Sunday clothes he 
goes to church, and he sings — oh, how loud! And 
he prays or he groans — oh, how audibly! And he 
has a very pleasant ear for music, and the sermon 
pleases him, and he goes home saying, "How beauti- 
ful is religion ! " On Monday he takes off the coat 
and hangs it up again, and all the other articles, and 
puts on his worldly clothes, and goes about his busi- 
ness. , Now, religion is no garment to be changed; it 
is a state of the soul. It may begin little, but it grows, 
and no man can lay it aside, no man can supersede it 
by anything else. It is education ; it is the recon- 
struction of a man's inward life and nature upon a 
nobler pattern than any that Nature can give us ; and 
there is no such thing as putting it on for this, and 
taking it off for that. It is character. Reputation 
may change, character does not easily ; and the habits 
of the soul formed upon everlasting truth and Divine 
influence — that is religion, and it does not come in a 
day, it does not come in the flesh. 



* 



The true religious man is a man who is positive and 
affirmative. A man who has nothing more than nots^ 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 59 

is nothing. To be anything, he must have actual 
virtues. 

There are a great many people who think that relig- 
ion means not doing wrong. As if a knitting machine 
would be considered good, that never knit any stock- 
ings, because it never misknit ! What is a man good 
for who simply does not do some things ? 



* 
* * 



Religion is not love to God alone ; it is love to man 

as well. 

* 

Ye, who mourn because particular modes are chang- 
ing, and think that religion is dying out, look deeper 
and pluck up hope out of your despair, and confidence 
out of your fear. And you who think religion is going 
away because of science, let me say that science is the 
handmaid of religion ; it is the John the Baptist" often- 
times, that clears the way for true religion. By relig- 
ion I do not mean outward things but inward states. 
I mean perfected manhood. I mean the quickening 
of the soul by the beautific influence of the Divine 
Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and confi- 
dence, and trust. That is not dying out. Not until 
the soul of man is quenched can religion die out. 
Not until God ceases to be God can religion be 
quenched in this world. It may have its nights and 



Co THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

days; it may have its winter and summer; i. may be 
subject to the great laws of oscillation and change; 
but, nevertheless, the word of God standeth sure; its 
foundations are immutable; and not until the last tear 
has been shed, not until the last pulse of love has 
throbbed, not until the new heavens and the new 
earth appear, will religion die on earth or lose its 
power among men. 

All the elements of manhood, in their right place 
and action, are constituent parts of religion ; but no 
one of them alone is religion. It takes the whole 
manhood, imbued and inspired of God, moving right 
both heavenward and earthward, to constitute religion. 






He who is using his whole self according to laws of 
God, is religious. Some men think devotion is relig- 
ion. Yes, devotion is religion; but it is not all of 
religion. Here is a tune written in six parts; and 
men are wrangling and quarreling about it. One says 
that the harmony is in the bass ; another, that it is in 
the soprano; another, that it is the tenor, and another 
that it is in the alto ; but I say that it is in all the six 
parts. Each may, in and of itself, be better than noth- 
ing ; but it requires the whole six parts to make what 
was meant by the musical composer. Some men say 
that love is religion. Well, love is, certainly, the high- 
est element of it ; but it is not that alone. Justice is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 6i 

religion ; fidelity is religion ; hope is religion ; faith is 
religion ; obedience is religion. These are all part 
and parcel of religion. Religion is as much as the 
total of manhood ; and it takes in every element of it. 

I believe God is giving new birth to us as He is to 
all Nature all the time, and that it is the result of 
Divine will, but not in the mechanical way, not with 
that irresistibleness. I believe it is the result of the 
Divine will, just as heat in the sun is the irresistible 
cause of moss and grass, and flowers, and shrubs, of 
grapes and fruit of every kind. No tree can stand up 
and say, " I made myself a pippin ". He is not going 
to nod his proud head as if he did it himself. He had 
the element in him out of which the tree came, and the 
fruit came ; but all came from the sun, and if there 
had been an eclipse, he never would have sprouted, let 
alone become the father of fruit ; and I believe no man 
in life ever thinks, wills, or has any upward aspiration, 
or any longings, any soul life, that God is not the 
author of. " In Him we live and move and have our 
being." 

To the spiritual man, the higher manhood, the man 
of the spirit, and not of the flesh ; all the impulses of 
his life, everything that he has, " By the grace of God 
I am what I am ". It is the circumambient influence, 
the universal, immanent God, the God everywhere and 
always, and in all things; that is the pabulum of life, 
is the spiritual stimulus by which we do anything that 
is higher than animal life itself. 



62 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






As the sun shining upon the trees is felt by the 
roots that are buried deep in the earth, and that never 
see the light which brings forth from them, that whnch 
is the nourishment of the whole tree, and that pro- 
duces the bud, and the leaf, and the blossom that 
cover it ; so great, that the shining of Thy face upon 
us may reach down to the deepest parts of our nature, 
and that every element of our life may be so penetrated 
with Thine influence that we may bear fruit to Thine 
honor and glory. 

Men are like prisoners in a dungeon, and God, like 
a harper, plays sweet melodies beneath their prison 
walls, if so be he may arouse a thought of home within 
them; but if they begin to be moved by the familiar 
sounds, pride and passion, their stern jailers try to 
shut them down in deeper dungeons, where no sound 
shall reach them. 

While you want no consolation, while there is music 
enough in the world for you, you feel no want of God. 
When you long for God in conscious poverty and mis- 
ery, feeling that you cannot live without Him, be sure 
that you shall find Him. He will throw around you 
the arm of His influence — then you shall know these 
hidden truths which the world cannot perceive. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 63 






The highest proof of any truth is moral conscious- 
ness. When a soul is conscious of being carried 
beyond itself in light, and peace, and joy, it has abso- 
lute proof that it is under the power of God's spirit. 
This may not be proof to other minds. That will 
depend upon the condition of those minds, A bell 
when struck will awaken vibrations in other bells, if 
they are keyed to the same tone. 



* 



Shabby as a beggar is, he is better off than if he 
was stark naked on a cold winter day. Though your 
morality is inferior, it is a world better off than to 
have nothing at all. But how glorious is that clothing 
of the Spirit that God gives to those that ask Him in 
faith and in humility! 



* 



As the touch of a musician brings differing sounds 
from the different strings of a harp, so the Divine 
touch, or inbreathing on the soul, brings forth results 
according to the individual nature of each person. 
But the variety, volume, combinations, intensities of 
the Divine influence upon the souls of different per- 
sons is a theme not yet explored and reduced to 
knowledge. 



64 THE CROIVN OF LIFE. 



# 
* * 



Jesus taught that the mind, opened and stimulated 
by the Divine soul, could bring forth emotions, disposi- 
tions, moral intuitions, joys, and visions such as do 
not come out of mere morality, nor out of ordinary 
influences in secular life. It was as if He had said, 
"You know no more about what you are, undeveloped 
in the higher possibilities, than a man knows what the 
seed is, that stops before it blossoms ". 



* 



The Spirit of God is that Spirit by which universal 
growth takes place; and there is the power of God 
given forth to every soul that wants it, and opens itself 
to it, to be regenerated by the power of the Holy 
Ghost. It is not a hard command that we should not 
be converted in any other way than that ; it is a most 
gracious permission, it is a glorious annunciation. In 
your struggle upward God is on your side, working out 
your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is 
God that is working in you to will and to do of His 
good pleasure. 

Glory be to God that a man may be converted, and 
that he has Divine help ! 



* 



The true life in this world is the life that is going 
on in the soul of man. No man knows what he is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 65 

until he has risen beyond the height of literature and 
social pleasure. No man knows what the soul is 
capable of being, or feeling, what vast circuits it can 
make, what voluminous experiences it can have, what 
strange triumphs belong to it, or what endurances and 
victories it can achieve, until he is brought under the 
influence of God. 



* 
* # 



This is true soul feeding — feeding the soul by 
staining it through with God's love, dropping gently 
upon it, as the darkest thunder-clouds are stained 
through by roseate hues of light, and turned to glory; 
the coming down upon the soul of Divine enthusiasms 
which throw their fiery sparks all through it, and 
kindle it with light and life and power; the coming of 
the influence of God's nature to the soul, brooding it, 
striking through it, rousing it up. 






When one comes under the conscious influence of 
the Divine Spirit, the soul lifts itself up with unwonted 
clearness, faith, joy, trust, effluence and liberty. What 
a bird was when it lay in its little round nest, an 
^g^, compared with what it is when it sings m the 
dewy morning, near heaven's gate — that is the soul in 
the body compared with what it is in the joy of sweet 
and loving intercourse with God through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 



66 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






O, what a tranquil sea that is when a man can cast 
anchor in the heart of Jesus ! What wind can greatly 
disturb him? 

When men come under the Divine influence, their 
life is said to be hid. Yes, it is hid; not simply- 
eclipsed as it is in sleep, but hid by rising so much 
higher than the lower life, that the lower life does not 
interpret it fairly. It has gone out of sight. Only in 
that sense is it hid. 

* # 

It is a life which comes to some by flashes. It is a 
life which comes to some by blessed dreams. There 
is a kind of spiritual haze which seems to befall some 
men, as there is an Indian summer which befalls the 
year; but there is also a true life. It is possible for 
the human soul to live in abundance and freedom and 
blessedness, so that it shall be forever at rest and at 
peace. 

Soul knows how to interpret soul. I do not want 
any one to tell me that a person is patient if I live 
with him. I do not want any one to teach me that a 
person is genial and gentle if I live with him, I see 
it. It informs the feature, it inspires the action, or it 
represses activity. I know it without words and with- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 67 

out analysis. And if this be true in the lower ranges 
of experience, how much more is it true in the very 
highest, where the soul from day to day is brooded by 
the Spirit of Almighty God and dwells in the imperial 
consciousness ! Because He lives I live ; I live in Him ; 
He in me ; God in Christ, Christ in God ; I at one 
with Christ, as He is with God — this is the mystic 
language of that higher consciousness. It is profound 
and elusive, but it is real and glorious. 



* 



Mere philosophy will never interpret God to us. 
Some of His works it will interpret, but not Him. 
He is a spirit; and only a spirit can understand Him, 
only that spirit which is of Him and in Him can 
interpret the ever-present God. It is only through 
the intuitions of our dispositions, rarefied, scantified, 
opened, impleted with the Divine Nature, that we can 
bring God near. 

I think if there is any one thing that has been mis- 
interpreted, it is the doctrine of the Divine influence 
upon the human soul. As I recollect my own belief 
as a child — and I was an orthodox child — I believed 
that when a man who was born a sinner, and who had 
grown up in sin, came to a certain age, and went 
through a proper fermentation, and had dejected the 
lees, as it were, and left the wine of life pretty clear 
above, he was converted. I believed that he then 



68 THE CROWN- OF LIFE. 

passed from the north side of the hedge, where it was 
shady, to the south side, where the sun always shone. 
I beUeved that God shone on His elect, that they had 
the Divine influence, and that no others had. But my 
impression now is, that there is not a single human 
soul that is not the product of the Divine Spirit, and 
that that Spirit is the vivific element of the universe; 
and that as the sun in spring knocks at the tomb 
of every sleeping plant, and there is a resurrection 
wherever there is a bud or germ, and there is not a 
daisy, or harebell, or ranunclus, or flower of any kind 
that does not start at the solicitation of the sun's light 
and warmth; so the roots of power being here in 
human souls, there must be a shining of the Divine 
Soul directly upon them to bring out in them intelli- 
gence, emotions and moral sentiments. This down- 
shining of God is universal. 

Mountains hold commerce with God's invisible 
ocean in the air, as good men endure by intercourse 
with the Invisible. Even in the droughts of summer, 
mountain streams are full-pulsed when all else is 
parched with fever. 

Truth is food, and is to be fed as men can bear it. 



All truth in the beginning is very much like gold at 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 69 

first. There is more rock than gold, and it is only 
after it has been stamped and ground to powder, and 
has gone through the chemical bath, that the gold is 
separated from the dross. 






When truth in any age has apparently been de- 
stroyed, it has only died as the seed dies, to come up 
again a hundred-fold. He that smites the thistle, 
replants the thistle over broad places. He that smites 
the ripe barley head and the ripe wheat is a sower of 
the seed, though he may destroy the seed-bed in which 
it ripens. The apparent destruction of influences for 
good, buries them only that they may come up again. 
The persecuting of them is only that they may be scat- 
tered everywhere. How the thrashing-floor contrasts 
with the sowing of the seed ! The tender nature of 
the one process, the violence of the other! Yet the 
flail separates wheat from straw and chaff. 



* 
* * 



The truths a man preaches ought to be to him like 
household words, and even to drop an inferior truth 
for a superior one ought to be to him like taking leave 
of a friend. 

Men are like cathedral windows, kaleidoscopic with 
stained glass of all manner of colors and shades, each 



JO THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

piece transmitting light of its own peculiar color; and 
the revelation of truth is according to the faculties in 
the men themselves through which it reports itself. 






All night long the snow charges down without clash 
or sound of trumpet. In the morning, fence and 
forest, hedge and herb and the low-growing grasses all 
over the field are covered by it. Is that the -sign of 
summer? Is this flocculent descent, that lies upon 
the white bosom of the field in all the region round 
about, a token of a harvest? Harvest out of snow? 
Yes ; for it broods softly upon the earth, and keeps it 
warm. It is indeed a good thing for all the hidden 
roots that are waiting to grow and develop. And as 
the sun sails northward, and the days and nights grow 
warmer, it changes its form and flies away, some of it 
to the air to keep the sponge moist yet, and some of it 
downward, carrying not alone itself. As the air is 
filled with gases everywhere, that have ascended from 
decaying vegetation and from human habitations, am- 
moniacal vapors, the snow catches them and carries 
them down, and has come thus to have the name of 
the poor man's manure. So, as it melts, it distributes 
through all the ground its health-giving, restoring and 
reviving properties. By and by the shoots of grass 
begin to come, and the early flowers come, and along 
in the spring, especially in the further northern regions 
where there is but a short summer, things make haste 
to jump and grow, and these are the children of the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. >j\ 

snow. It came as death comes; its appearance was 
that of a shroud, but it bore in its bosom a silent 
life — a life not unfolded. It gave itself to the earth, 
and when by and by in vapors, little by little, it comes 
up again to hang as beautiful clouds in the summer — 
hang throughout all these regions, it has not returned 
unto God void. It has gone as a missionary goes, 
and has borne its message of life and growth to all the 
fields, and has accomplished that whereunto it was 
sent. 

" So shall my word be," saith God. 






Truth never enters the world as an army, a thousand 
men abreast. Truth always comes as John the Baptist 
came, in the wilderness, clothed in camel's hair, and 
for the most part eating locusts and wild honey. It 
cannot get anything better. 






If you suppose that when God, Who knows all 
things in their infinite relations, rather than in their 
limited time relations. Who sees the end from the 
beginning. Who lives in a largeness of which we have 
no conception. Who is in a sphere removed infinitely 
further from us than we are from the beetle that bur- 
rows under the bark — if you suppose that when He 
attempts to teach men, who are shut up to matter, 
inclosed in the flesh. He will address them fronj His 



72 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

own standpoint, you have no true conception of the 
Divine procedure. His standpoint of truth is one, and 
ours is another; and we must judge by that which is 
taught us in our circumscribed sphere, in the reahii of 
our limited knowledge, while He judges by His bound- 
less knowledge in a sphere which is no less in extent 
than the universe itself. Though it may be compati- 
ble for us to have the beginnings of an understanding 
of the Divine nature, it is impossible for us to have 
such a conception of it as God Himself has. The dif- 
ference between a pure spirit in the spiritual realm 
and a soul in the body, surrounded by immutable 
physical laws, is one which leads to endless mistakes 
unless we are willing to accept rudimentary, alphabetic 
ideas with humility. 

Great truths, like great cannon, are often left lying 
in the dust because they are so great that men cannot 
easily use them, and their recoil is proportioned to 
their power. 

# * 

Every truth has to go through its martyr period of 
trial, darkness and crucifixion, and men must go with 
it, and not till it emerges from the grave does it appear 
in glory and victory. This was the experience of the 
holy men of old, and this is the experience of all who 
do any great good for their times. Victory may be 
delayed, yet the spirit of justice, of benevolence, of 
liberty may be gaining ground. Our business is not 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 73 

to date God's victories, but to prepare the way for 
them. 






No man can express the great truths of human life 
without employing all his moral and aesthetic nature. 
No man ever delivers great truths worthily without ris- 
ing into eloquence and even into poetry. 






A creed is just like a philosopher's telescope. He 
sweeps the heavens to see if he can find the star for 
which he is searching ; and by and by the glass brings 
it to his eye. The glass helps him ; but it is not the 
glass that sees the star. It is the eye that does that. 
The glass is a mere instrument by which to identify 
the star, and magnify it, and bring it near, and shut 
off other things. A blind man could not see a heav- 
enly body with a telescope by which we identify philo- 
sophical truths, and magnify them, and bring them 
near; but it is the heart that is to apprehend them. 
It is the heart that is to interpret the things that are 
marked out by our creed or philosophy. 



* 



Jerusalem is pictured in the Revelations as having 
twelve gates. Of course the idea came from the 
.twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve patriarchs (not 
one of whom, I should think, got into heaven, though, 



74 THE CROWJSr OF LIFE. 

by the way they acted); but one thing is very certain, 
that if a city has got twelve gates, the men that cannot 
go in at one gate, can go in at another and opposite 
one, and they have to take different roads to get into 
them. 

Now, if a man wishes to go to Chicago, and wishes 
to go by the way of Alabama, it is perfectly permis- 
sible ; it will take him longer and cost him more, and 
fatigue him more, but when he has come to Chicago 
he has got there just as much as if he had gone in a 
straight line. 

So, in regard to the great things of religion, and 
love to God and love to man, if once they reach that! 
One man can do it through the Catholic church ; in 
God's name let him do it — I don't care how far he 
travels, if he gets there. Another man can do it in the 
silence of the Quaker church ; let him, that is his look- 
out, not mine, only get there. Another man goes 
through Presbyterianism, Westminster Catechism and 
all; the whole creation groans and travails in pain 
until now, if he goes that way, nevertheless it is his 
liberty, only so he gets there. The heavenly city has 
twelve gates, and there must be at least twelve differ- 
ent paths to get there. 

I am not for undenominationalising men. I believe 
in sects. I believe that the Baptists ought to be Bap- 
tists simply because they think so, and as a man think- 
eth so he is. I think that the Calvinist that is genu- 
inely misled into that, ought to stand by his guns. I 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 75 

think that the Presbyterian Church ought to be Pres- 
byterian, and the Methodist Church ought to be Meth- 
odist, and the Episcopal Church ought to be Episcopal, 
and the Congregationalist ought to be Congregational; 
they, of all men in the world, have reason to be proud 
of their Congregationalism, and to stand by it. But let 
not Ephraim vex Judah, let not one mash against the 
other ; love men in that respect. There is one thing 
that belongs to them altogether — love with a pure 
heart fervently, and I will trust any misleading doc- 
trine or any ordinance or any worship, if it stands with 
the burning bush of love showing that the Lord God 
Almighty is present within. 

A man that goes to heaven to escape hell is one of 
those men that will enter heaven " so as by fire ". 

Our creeds are useful in their own place. They are 
like stairs. If we know how to use them, they help us, 
step by step, to go up to the higher apartments. In 
their own place, which is a lowly one, where they are 
servants, they are useful; but when men become so 
much enamoured of their creeds as to make them their 
masters, and let them stand in the place of the truths 
that they are meant merely to disclose; when they are 
in the place of their own contents, instead of being 
used only as a philosophical nexus or outside connec- 
tion — then they are usurpers. 



76 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
# ^ 



Men ought never to worship a creed. That which 
it means is oftentimes worshipped without any knowl- 
edge of the creed; and that which it means is often- 
times trodden under foot by men who pretend to be 
defenders of the creed. 



# 



The roots of Nature are in the human mind. The 
-life and meaning of the outward world is not in itself, 
but in us. 

Nature implants her spirit in the human soul. Her 
shape is without us, her meaning is within us. 






The hands of a giant upon the keys of an organ can 
make no more music than the hands of a common 
man, for the sound is in the instrument, not in the 
hand of the man who touches it. And the fingers of 
Nature, touching the faculties of the human soul, pro- 
duce effects, not by the magnitude of the thing acting, 
but by the music within the instrument touched. 






No flower blossoms, no pine stretches itself higher 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 77 

toward heaven from the mountain, no cloud sails in 
the air, there is nothing in the field, and nothing in 
summer or winter, that is not of God to me. 

Nature is a man's library who knows how to seek 
for knowledge. Nature is every man's picture gallery 
who knows how to hunger after and appreciate beauty. 
Nature is every man's portfolio, and herbarium, and 
garden. Nature is full of instruction to those who 
have a heart for knowledge. 






It is as right for some persons to have the chamber 
of the soul unlocked by the key of Nature, as it is for 
others to have it unlocked by the key of the Cate- 
chism. For God is sovereign, and He works as He 
pleases, and He pleases to work in many ways. 






We rejoice in this day, in its light, in its tranquil- 
lity, and in all the promise that it has of renewed life 
in all the earth. We behold the swelling bud. We 
hear the coming birds. We discern in sheltered 
places the grass greening. We believe that all around 
us the earth is waiting that the silent touch of God 
may bring resurrection to it. We are glad with each 
and in each other, but we desire the light of hope and 



78 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

cheer, of love and comfort that comes from Thee, O 
Thou Prince and Saviour. 

It is a good thing to make it sure that we shall live 
hereafter ; but it is also a good thing to know how to 
live here and now. This is simply a practice ground, 
and we are to live hereafter, and know that we are, by 
practicing those virtues which will make it possible for 
us to understand anything in heaven — its company, 
its joys, its associations. 

This life is a forming, not an enjoying one. Happi- 
ness is not the end to be attained here, but manliness. 

All the arrangements of our lives are parts of God's 
system of instruction, and they form an organic whole, 
of which every part is necessary to the perfectness of 
the whole. 

The way to live is not to think about living, to do 
without speculating about doing. 

Once, when a boy, I stood on Mount Pleasant, at 
Amherst, and saw a summer thunder-storm enter the 
valley of the Connecticut from the north. Before it 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 79 

all was bright; centerwise it was black as midnight, 
and I could see the fiery streaks of lightning striking 
down through it; but behind the cloud — for I could 
see the rear — it was bright again. In front of me 
was that mighty storm hurtling through the sky; and 
before it I saw the sunlight, and behind it I saw the 
sunlight ; but to those that were under the center of it 
there was no brightness before or behind it. They 
saw the thunder-gust, and felt the pelting rain, and 
were enveloped in darkness, and heard the rush of 
mighty winds ; but I, that stood afar off, could see 
that God was watering the earth, and washing the 
leaves, and preparing the birds for a new outcome of 
jubilee, and giving to men refreshment and health. 
So I conceive that our human life here, with its sor- 
rows and tears, as compared with the eternity that we 
are going into, is no more than the breath of a sum- 
mer thunder-storm ; and if God sees that our experi- 
ence in this world is to work out an exceeding great 
reward in the world to come, there is no mystery in it 
— to Him. 



# 



O, if one's life might be like the life of a skiff or 
yacht, or any craft or single sail in the sequestered 
lake, which rude winds never disturb, living would be 
easy; that is, it would be easy to live, if there were 
not so many men around ; but to carry our slender 
bark amid currents and violent winds and constant 
whirls, amid rocks and bars, and amid fleets sailing in 
every direction — that is not easy. 



8o THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






You are worse than you think you are ; you are bet- 
ter than you think you are. You are not doing half 
so much as you ought to be doing; you are doing a 
thousand times more than you dream of. You are 
working for this Ufe too exclusively, but your work 
strikes through into the future life, and there is 
another significance given to it on the other side. 



* 



Life is not a grand concert which we enter to hear 
magnificent playing upon sweet instruments. It is 
more like a piano manufactory, where one hears, not 
music, but a confusion of noises, sawing, rattling, 
thumping, grating — all inharmonious sounds. 

Men have reasoned on the supposition that this 
world is a place where we are put to be played upon. 
It is rather the place where those chords are made 
and tuned which God's own hand shall play upon, 
hereafter. 



* 



At midnight, undertake to examine a landscape with 
a candle, carrying it round to each particular thing, 
and try thus to get an idea of the whole scene. That 
is the way we are exploring in this life. But let a 
thunder-storm come up, and a flash of lightning opens 
the whole country — hill, valley, cliff, every part- — ^to 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



instantaneous view ; and we see it instantly. That is 
the way we will think in the other life. 






Live in the future when the present is intolerable. 
The future is that which lies along the path-walk of 
Christ, where the promises are. 



# 
* * 



Life is one grand insufficiency. Human life is like 
a half-finished portrait; the features marked out and 
hinted at, some one part, perhaps, carried further than 
another ; but no man can determine what it is or how 
it shall look when it is perfected. In this life we are 
grinding pigments, we are collecting materials; we but 
dimly see, and that imperfectly. But there will come 
a day when I shall know even as I am known; and as 
God, the All-knowing, looks through and through me, 
and knows me altogether, I shall behold Him as He 
is, and all shadows and partialities will have passed 
away forever. 



# 



Life may not be worth living here, but may be trans- 
cendently worth living on account of the hereafter ; for 
man is a biennial, and it takes two lives to tell him 
what he is. The hollyhock cannot bloom till the sec- 
ond season. All the first season it has no comeliness; 
it is coarse in leaf, undeveloped in stem, and shows no 
color; and the winter hushes it to rest; but the next 



82 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

summer brings it out, and it lifts itself up in unimag- 
ined beauty as compared with what it was in its first 
summer. So men are born here for a start; and they 
are to come to themselves only after death, and when 
the second summer shall find them, then they will be 
lifted up in unimagined glory and beauty, unless win- 
ter kills them. 

This world's march is not a dumb, dull march to 
execution. It is not a march to a sort of clouded vic- 
tory. It is a march to ethereal light by and by. 



^• 



The fruitions of this world are nothing to the har- 
vests of single kernels which will wave a hundred-fold 
in the other life. 

Grant, we pray Thee, that we may be so intoned by 
the hope of the heavenly life, that we may' live so near 
to the encouragements of it, that we shall be able to 
take enough out of it to uphold us in the present stress 
of life ; that we may not only walk as seeing Him Who 
is invisible, but walk the realm invisible where He 
dwells. 

A man who does not know how to live here proba- 
bly will not know how tp live hereafter, until after a 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 83 

probationary period, at any rate; and a man who 
knows how to live here so that his mind is kept in 
harmony and benevolence with all his fellowmen, 
seeking their interest, their good, their peace, their 
comfort, their ennoblement, has the very traming by 
which a man knows how to worship God and to dwell 
with the pure hereafter. 

Though every coming event may not be laid down 
beforehand, God will see that we come to each with 
all the preparation required. 



* 
* * 



We are not indeed- to forget the future, since that 
would destroy the perspective of life, and take away its 
length, breadth and proportions. Life is an organized 
whole. Yesterday is the parent of to-day; to-day is 
the root on which to-morrow is to grow. We sleep, 
but the loom of life never stops, the pattern that was 
weaving when the sun went down is weaving still 
when it rises. In our plans and ideals we must live 
for our whole existence. The best way to prepare for 
the future is to hold it up while forming our plans, but 
to live in each day as if that were a detached whole in 
itself. 

The future is a kaleidoscope ; every day its glittering 
particles form into new combinations. We know there 



84 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

will be joy and sorrow, but in what forms and combi- 
nations we know not. The present has but one win- 
dow out of which we can look, and that opens back 

into the past. 

* 

God is enthroned in the future; at every step we 
travel toward him. The only question is, can you be 
serene, faithful, just, honest, truthful and hopeful, for 
to-day .? God will take care of to-morrow. 

# 

Grant that we may have faith to believe in the inher- 
itance of the future. May we have confidence that 
our life is moving toward a land- which is transcendent 
in all excellence, in plenitude of power, where, when 
we drop these mortal bodies, we shall come forth into 
glorious realities which but faintly appear in this life. 
Grant that we may feel we are living toward summer. 
As they that are in the far north, and wait in the dark- 
ness of winter, and rejoice to see it coming, when the 
sun shall again rise upon their horizon with light; so 
may we, wintered in time, look perpetually to death as 
sunrise ; and may our departure hence be our emerg- 
ence in the land of light. 

A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time, to 
a pattern which he does not see, but God does; and 
his heart is a shuttle. On one side of the loom is sor- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 85 

row, and on the other is joy; and the shuttle struck 
ahernately by each, flies back and forth, carrying the 
thread, which is white or black, as the pattern needs; 
and in the end, when God shall yield up the finished 
garment and all its changing hues shall glance out, it 
will then appear that the deep and dark colors were as 
needful to beauty as the bright and high colors. 



* 
* * 



Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon us 
His image and superscription. 






Not when God is lifting men up, but when He is 
pressing them down, is He blessing them most. 

Not when he rides into the city after a victory is the 
general most noble, but when he is in the wilderness, 
and everything is dark and lowering, and by his cour- 
age and indomitable perseverance he overcomes obsta- 
cles. It is when a man rises above his circumstances 
and moods that true manhood shows itself in him. It 
is then he is grandest and nearest to God. 






When God brings men into this world in a crude 
state, as sand and kelp are brought into the manufac- 
tory; or when, like crude iron, they are subjected to 
the transforming influences of this trip-hammer life, by 



86 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

which they are thumped, and jammed, and cut, and 
haggled, and pricked, and bruized, he does it that 
moral results may be evolved on a large scale. 

You shall find that they who are free from hard- 
ships, from troubles, from the necessity of endeavor, 
and who never struggled with adversity of any kind, 
cannot be relied upon for sills and posts. They may 
do for veneering the inside, when you want something 
pretty, but they are good for nothing else. 

There are some steamers that are built so that they 
do not rise over the wave; they jam their nose right 
into it, as if they would plough the whole ocean. 
The consequence is, that their decks are always wet, 
and everybody is always sick. There are other steam- 
ers that lift themselves to everything that comes, and 
ride over the waves, and are as sweet as a cradle. 

It is a great thing to teach men how to ride over 
trouble; and it is a very painful thing to see men 
dashing their noses into the waves, and insisting upon 
going through them, when they could a great deal 
easier go over them. 

No man can become a man that has not been 
ground more or less. It is grinding that destroys the 
blunt edges, and makes men sharp. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 87 






When the sculptor stands before a block of marble, 
I can imagine that the unlucent and unintelligent 
stone might say, " I was promised to be made a god- 
like figure and put into a public niche to be admired; 
yet here, day by day, there is a rude, brutal fellow 
with his sharp chisel and heavy mallet, knocking off 
pieces from me, and when he has got down so that 
even my form appears, still he is knocking my face 
and cutting me here and there." That is the way that 
works of art are made. It is by things that they lose 
that the features come out and their proportions are 
made to appear. God is a great artist. And if there 
are any of you that are to be statues in the niches 
of heaven, God, probably, is chiselling you, and you 
ought, at least, by this time, to understand something 
about God's dealings with you ; that by your care, by 
your burdens, by your sorrows, and by your losses, He 
is teaching you that this world is not your home, and 
that the other life is ; that you are not fit for it yet, 
and He is, as it were, like a sculptor, unburdening you 
of the superfluous stone that is in you, and letting out 
the lineaments and beauty of your hidden life. 






A man that is bankrupt when his property goes has 
not been a man. To be a true man, surrounded with 
true riches, one should be able to say, " I am richer 
inside than I am outside." There is many and many 



88 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

a man who, like an athlete, does not go into the arena 
for high conflict until he has stripped himself of all 
encumbering clothes, and stands in his nakedness, 
that every muscle may have free play in his conflict 
with some adversary. There are men that never seem 
so noble and strong as when God has stripped them 
of all their possessions, and left nothing but them; 
and the grandest thing there is this side of the throne 
of God is a man. 

The man who plans for himself in life that there 
shall not be any hills in his road, that he is going to 
travel on a level plain, that there is not going to be 
any gravel in his shoes, that there are not to be any 
stones in his way, and that he is not going to have 
any color taken out of his serene face — that man has 
an antagonist that he does not suspect; it is God — 
Who has decreed that he shall bear burdens, and that 
he shall work out his own salvation, and develop his 
own manhood. 

Ah 1 the loss of things in this world is oftentimes 
great gain. Have you noticed that frequently in the 
abundance of the leaves of summer, both the land- 
scape and the mansion are hidden 1 Though it is a 
sad time, and we do not like to see the leaves turn 
sere; though we dread the coming of the frosts, yet 
behold, when, in the morning after the frost, every 
tree is bare, and not a leaf is left; as we look, there 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 89 

appears a house that we have not seen all summer. 
The leaves hid it; the landscape — the mountains and 
the distant river — which has so long been obscured, 
is revealed to us. What a wonderful vision is opened 
when the leaves fall ! 

Many and many a man, whose prosperity has been 
like thick foliage before his eyes, could not see his 
Father's house, had no view of the heavenly Jerusa- 
lem, nor of the beautiful landscape beyond; but when 
adversity came and stripped him bare, and people 
said, " He is gone ! he is gone ! " he was richer than 
he ever had been before. 



* 



We pray to God to make us strong, meaning, drop 
down some invisible strength through the air into our 
souls. God answers our prayer by laying upon us a 
burden, and says, "Stand up". But we cannot stand 
up under it without growing strong. 



* 



When the Ohio river is at its lowest ebb there are 
places which a boy could ford, going across with per- 
fect ease and safety ; but in the spring, when the snow 
melts on the Alleghanies, and the water comes pouring 
down, the channel between the banks is filled so that 
neither man nor beast can cross it. And when the 
mightier storms come on, the Ohio swells and rises 
still higher, and overflows the banks, and covers the 



90 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

lowlands, and men drive their cattle up on higher 
ground, and take refuge there themselves. And when 
the greater freshets come, the inhabitants go on climb- 
ing higher and higher until they reach points where 
the flood cannot reach them. 

So, when the overflowing storms of reverse and 
disappointment overcome you, do not sit still and be 
drowned; and do not float like water-logged sticks, 
too long cut, soaked and rotten, and good for nothing; 
but rise so high that no flood and no envenomed shaft 
can reach you; so high that heaven shall be your 
home, that you shall be in the presence of God, and 
that that spiritual manhood shall be yours which can 

see no corruption. 

* 

O ye that mourn because you are cut off from the 
work of life! What is the work of life.'' Is it building 
St. Peter's.? It may be that. It may also be plough- 
ing the field. 

Either by ploughing the field or building the temple 
we may be ministering to our higher manhood, and 
to the welfare of others. 

He that builds a higher manhood is doing the work 
of God ; whether he constructs an edifice or tills the 
soil. 

If you want the sweetest of flowers — the trailing 
arbutus — you will not find it on the tops of churches; 
you will not find it on walls of brick; you will not find 
it in cultivated places where the resources of the 
farmer's skill and ingenuity have been expended; you 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 91 

will not find it on the lofty hills. It humbly creeps 
along the edges of the forest where the soil is dry, and 
not rich. Before the snow is completely gone you 
may find it nestling down under the leaves, ready to 
burst forth in the spring; and when it has come forth, 
it has a beauty with which nothing else can vie. 
Blessed be the winter, blessed be the snow, and 
blessed be the covering leaves, dry, withered, under 
which lie such exquisite blossoms. 

God's flower-bed is oftentimes your sick-bed; for 
patience, a sweet resignation, faith that looks beyond 
the visible, and that development of a true manhood 
which sickness often brings out in its royalty and 
fulness — these things are better than any outward 
achievement. 

Woe to the man who has everything brought to him ; 
and blessed are they who are born under adverse 
circumstances, and have no chance in life; and who, 
instead of whining because they have no chance, 
develop an inward manhood that gives them a chance 
— for there is that in man which dominates over 
chance, time and nature. A man can make himself 
sovereign if he has but the purpose. 



* 



Old trees stand on mountain sides, and that the 
wind plays harp with through winter and summer, 
grow strong, so that the tornado cannot wrest them 



92 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

from their places. Oaks that are anchored among the 
rocks, the earthquake itself cannot dislodge. They 
grow massive through the centuries. But take the 
palm-tree that never has been outside of the conserva- 
tory. It is brought up with no more agitation than a 
bee makes when flying in its branches. And how 
much can it bear? If the gardener but leaves the 
door open for a single night, and the frost comes to it, 
it is gone. It has no stamina. It is softened by the 
things that made it grow so fat. 

While outward blessings are an advantage, the loss 
of all things may be a higher one. There are thou- 
sands of men destroyed because they have so much. 






All our noblest inspirations are but as tapers, and 
the great sun of the other life shall throw them into 
darkness. Whatever is bright and transcendent in 
nobleness here, is dim in the light of the reality there. 



* 



Among the farces men act is the trying to ascer- 
tain whether they are Christians or not, by inquiring 
whether they are willing to die. It is a duty to feel 
like living while you live ; when God wants you to die, 
the chariot will be waiting. 

The valley of the shadow of Death is not dreadful 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 93 

to those who pass through it, but to those who follow 
after, but may not pass through. 

Death is a strainer; and there are multitudes of 
things that men value here which are rubbish at the 
mouth of the grave. They are not permitted to go 
through. 

The grave is God's bankrupt court, which clears a 
man of his property and his debts at the same time. 






O, may the sun pierce through the shade of trees, 
dear to many birds, to fall in checkered light upon my 
grave! I ask no stone or word of inscription. May 
flowers be the only memorial of my grave, renewed 
every spring, and maintained through the summer. 






To every truly Christian experience the grave is as 

a telescope, and as a magnifying glass, through which 

the world beyond and the triumph over this world are 

being celebrated. 

* 

At the grave we shall leave all that this world has 



94 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

given us, we carry out only what the soul has in itself, 
of honor, purity, nobleness; if we have allowed our- 
selves to be cheated there, we go out paupers, eter- 
nally bankrupt. 

Death is the swelling of the seed that has lived 
here, that is dried up and is waiting for its planting. 
Death is the bursting of the bud in April that all win- 
ter long has lain tight bound within itself, waiting for 
its life of efflorescence. Death is entering on summer 
from the frigid zone. 

The door of death is the door of hope ; the grave is 
that lens through which we see immortality. 






It is a man dying with his harness on that angels 
love to take. 

* * 

The perfection that God thinks of is not simply ful- 
filling a few laws and restraining a few appetites. It is 
growth, it is largeness of thought, largeness of heart, 
largeness of disposition; and no man yet living upon 
earth, save Him who descended from above and called 
Himself the equal of the eternal God, has ever reached 
anything like perfection. A man may have overcome 
the ordinary accidents and temptations of life, but 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 95 

growth and blossom await us. Buds may appear here, 
and some few flowers, but not until we are trans- 
planted and see God as He is, and breathe the pure 
atmosphere of the eternal summer, and are surrounded 
by all the saints in glory, shall any one of us be able 
to say, " I am perfect. I see Him as He is, and I am 
like Him." 

No eloquence is like that of a fact of soul-experi- 
ence. What God is doing within us, is the most 
dramatic thing that is going on in all the world. 
There are dramas of passion, there are dramas of his- 
tory; but the silent dramas of the summer of the soul 
are more wonderful than any others that are taking 
place on earth ; and these are the ones that mostly 
slumber, and are not brought out in speech. 

The best deeds in every department of life of those 
that have gone before, are embalmed and transmitted 
as legacies unspeakably precious. Pearls and dia- 
monds, and precious stones of every name, are not to 
be compared with those richer jewels of the soul, 
which here and there, though too rarely, have flashed 
out their light in days gone by. 

Great souls know each other. Years are the servi- 
tors of slower natures, and nurse them into mutual 



96 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

confidences. There are certain touches that fine 
natures know instantly, conclusive of all the rest — 
the free-masonry of the sons of God ! 



# 
* # 



The rapture of true love in souls on earth at first 
finding themselves each other's, the glory and pride 
of finding one's self loved, the conscious swelling in 
us of another life mightier than we knew before being 
loved — this is the only experience that will at all 
shadow forth the communion of man's soul with God. 
It is the war of Spirit with Spirit. 



# 



He that reads by the outward e)'e does not see half 
that is written in this world. The spirit reads one 
thing, and the flesh another. 






The soul, when it gathers its strength and feels its 
own majesty, rises above the trifling accidents of life 
and rides triumphantly over them as an ark over a 
flood. 

The soul sits in the human body as great commer- 
cial cities sit upon the sides of the sea; and as every 
climate and every land on the earth send forth their 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 97 

various productions to them, and as all things report 
themselves in these great commercial citadels, so the 
soul, an open harbor, receives from all the universe 
its stores and its tributes. 

There is in domestic sorrow a delicacy, or ought to 
be, which should shrink from an ostentatiousness such 
as mourning apparel cannot fail to have. 

No one has a right so to express his sorrows as to 
intrude them upon every eye wherever he goes. 

Autumnal days are the most beautiful days of the 
year, and they ought to be the most beautiful days in 
a man's life. In October things do not grow any 
more, they ripen, they fulfill the destiny of the summer, 
and the thought of autumn is that it is going down, 
going forth. When all things in Nature know and feel 
that death is coming near, do they sheet themselves in 
black, as pagan Christians do.? Do they turn every- 
thing to hideous mourning, as pagan Christians do? 
They cry, " Bring forth our royal garments " ; and the 
oak puts on the habiliments of beauty, and all the 
herbs of the field turn to scarlet and yellow and every 
color that is most precious; and the whole month of 
autumn goes tramping toward death, glowing and 
glorious. It is only men that make death hateful and 
gloomy and black — servants of midnight the whole of 
them. 



98 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
# * 



No man ever yet learnt by having somebody else 
learn for him. A man learns arithmetic by blunder in 
and blunder out, but at last he gets it. A man learns 
to write through scrawling ; a man learns to swim by 
going into the water, and a man learns to vote by 
voting. We are not attempting to make a govern- 
ment; we are attempting to teach sixty millions of 
men how to conduct a government by self-control, by 
knowledge, by intelligence, by fair opportunity to 
practice. It is better that we should have sixty 
millions of men learning through their own mistakes 
how to govern themselves, than it is to have an arbi- 
trary government with the whole of the rest of the 
people ignorant. 

Voting is an art. It is like rifle-shooting — a man 
misses a good many times before he learns to hit. 



* 



What are called woman's rights are simply the 
rights of human beings, and before a woman can do 
right and well in the direction of humanity and virtue 
she has a right to vote. I hold that a woman has the 
right to vote ; but if you withhold from her on any con- 
siderations of supposed propriety voting for the remote 
questions of civility, there is one sphere where a 
woman is not allowed to vote, and where she ought to 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 99 

have a vote. She brings forth children in pain, she 
spends and squanders her Hfe on them, bringing them 
up from infancy and helplessness to manhood and 
strength; and if there is one creature on the earth 
that has a right to vote what sort of school there 
should be in a district, what teacher should be there, 
for how many months it should be kept open, what 
should be taught in it — if there is one person who has 
a right to speak of the gambling dens and drinking 
hells that are round about her family, it is the mother 
of the children, and in all police relations and educa- 
tional matters, and everything that touches the virtue 
and morality of society, our civilization will not be per- 
fected until it should be, as it is in religion, that man 
and woman stand before God equal and alike. 



# 
* * 



The ballot — the silent fall of those flakes of paper, 
which come as snow comes, soundless, but which 
gather, as snow gathers on the tops of the mountains, 
to roll with the thunder of the avalanche, and crush all 
beneath it. 

The corruption of the ballot is a blow at the very 
heart of public liberty. The result is liable to be, not 
the unbiased expression of the popular will, but the 
fulfillment of the wishes of tricksters and unprincipled 
politicians. 



100 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






The way to teach a man to vote is to let him vote ; 
the way to teach a man archery is to let him shoot ; to 
look at a match will never teach him to shoot. 



# 



There are a great many generous people that are 
not liberal, and there are a great many liberal people 
that are not generous. A man is liberal when, taking 
a large view, he follows his. higher judgment in regard 
to objects of relief or of donation. He does not need 
to see; he has a large circumspection of causes and 
influences, and so he is liberal. But a man that is 
generous, generally follows his senses. He wants to 
hear the cry, to see the poverty, to feel the loss. Any- 
thing that he can hear, and see, and feel, and observe, 
he has the impulse of kindness toward, and that is 
being generous. A great many men are very hard and 
cold ; they are liberal, but they have no generosity, 
and they have no credit for being even liberal. Gen- 
erosity is the senses working with kindness, while lib- 
erality is faith working with kindness, which is much 
larger. 

* * 

Some have supposed that a meek man was one who, 
when he was hit, just did not hit back. I despise 
such meekness as that. To be lean and rat-like, run- 
ning round in the holes of life, is not to be meek. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. loi 

Meekness is that great luminousness which the com- 
plete ascendancy of all the higher and nobler instincts 
of man gives to the whole expression of his life — to 
his eye, to his face, to his words, to his deeds. It is 
the richness of the Divine elements in a man that 
makes him illustrious and beautiful. 






Men are seldom true to themselves or entirely nat- 
ural in their prayers. 

A prayer is not a thread on which men are to see 
how many texts they can string. 






Many prayers are rolling full of O's, and the voice 
runs through half a semi-circular scale of gracious into- 
nation with every other sentence. It is — O, do this, 
and O, do that, O, send, O, give, O, bless, O, help, O, 
search, O, look, O, smile, O, come, O, forgive, O, 
spare, O, hear, O, let, O, snatch, O, watch — O! O! 
O ! through the whole petition with every variety of 
inflection. 

We pray that Thou wilt be with those who have 
troubles of heart; who are necessitous; whose better 
nature trembles and is afraid ; who every day look up 



102 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

with anxious thoughts. O, Lord! Thou that didst 
bear the cross, dost Thou give them an empty cross? 
Has any soul ever come and taken Thy cross, that 
Thou wert not with it and beneath it, to bear it? 
How many have taken that cross as of dry and sea- 
soned wood, and found it springing forth and clasping 
them with a thousand tendrils and branches, every 
branch full of fruit, till they were embowered and 
embosomed in that which seemed to them a task, or 
labor! Draw near to all those who are in any trouble 
of mind, and so magnify Thyself unto them that their 
trouble shall not be able to abide. When quiet days 
come, then comes the dust that settles on the fairest 
things ; but when rousing winds come, then comes 
cleansing, and the dirt is blown away. Send, we 
beseech Thee, that wind from heaven which shall take 
away the dust of care and the grime of trouble from 
us, and give us clear skies at last between our souls 
and Thine. 

I pray on the principle that the wine knocks the 
cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermenta- 
tion, and there must be a vent somewhere. It is the 
soul that prays first; the tongue may afterwards. 






Prayer is never to be a substitute for exertion. It 
is never to take the place of education. Prayer is ask- 
ing God to use the enginery of Nature, the enginery of 



THE CROWN 'OF LIFE. 103 

society, and above all, the enginery of our souls in our 
behalf. Men say, " God is not going to stop the uni- 
verse to answer prayer ". No ; but he is going to 
work the universe in order to answer prayer. I can- 
not stand in my wheat field and say, "O, wheat, come 
up", and have an immediate answer to my prayer; but 
if I want wheat, I know how I can get it. There are 
certain laws of Nature, I know, and I know that the 
operation of these laws is inevitable and sure, and I 
can call up blessings by using them upon myself, upon 
my family and upon my neighbors ; for to-day, for the 
year to come and for a whole generation. 

Any trouble that a man would go to his earthly 
father about, he may go to God about. People say: 
" Do you believe that, contrary to all the great laws of 
Nature, and political economy, God will provide a sum 
of money for a man in answer to his prayer ? Do you 
believe that God controvenes natural laws to assist 
a man in paying his debts ? " I do not. But when a 
man has used his means to the uttermost, and trusts 
in God, then God uses his means to control natural 
laws for that man's benefit. God helps men not by 
stopping natural laws, but by using them better for us 
than we can use them for ourselves. And when a 
man is in trouble, and goes to God and says, " I have 
done all I can, I do not know what to do more, I am 
willing to suffer or to be relieved — 'Thy will be 
done'." I believe that then God hears and answers 
prayer, even though of a secular nature. 



104 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Prayer is not simply a desire that we may have that 
which in the present hour we may need. It is a sense 
of our aUiance with our heavenly Father. It is an 
endeavor to be in such converse with Him as a child 
is during the hour of its joy, or its sorrow, or of its 
burden, in the presence of its earthly parent. It is 
lifting up the soul out of matter, and out of its poor 
surroundings, into the presence and sympathy of the 
Spirit of God, the great Love and Lover. 






Prayer is not the voice of a beggar. It is not 
simply the expression of want. It is the expression in 
our best hours, and in our best moods, of the best 
thoughts, the best sentiments, the best emotions, the 
best aspirations, the best of everything. If the soul 
be a mighty estate ; if it hath everything of flower and 
fruit in it, we bring something of everything and the 
best, and offer it to God. 






Prayer chiefly, is the soul's communion with God. 
It is chiefly translation. It is chiefly transfiguration. 
It was worth more to Peter and James and John, to 
stand for an hour and see the spirits dawn through the 
heaven, and talk with Christ, Whose face shone as the 
sun, and Whose raiment was white as light, than if 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 105 

the three tabernacles which they craved had been built 
of diamonds and rubies on the mountain-top. It is 
what we get by the soul that makes us rich. 






As birds that are low down in dusky forests, and 
are chased by owls, escape in the broad sunlight, so 
our souls, when they are in low, dark places, flying 
away from these up toward God, find release, and sing 
for joy. 

# * 

Prayer is not so much an office, as it is the soul's 
whole attitude toward God, so that everything which 
one does, he does in conscious communion with God. 






I think the answer to prayer is that which gives 
inspiration to the souls of men ; and he who walks in 
the presence of God, and lives under the inspiration of 
His down-brooding touch, has in himself the great 
causes which will work out the answers of prayer — 
and that in the higher spheres, as well as in the lower. 






You can draw a stop of an organ, and it will give 
the sound which belongs to that stop ; but you cannot 
do the same thing with the soul. If you would enjoy 



io6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the richest fruits of prayer, you must abound in 
prayer; you must live in the conscious presence of 
God; you must be in constant and intimate commun- 
ion with Him. Then there can be no doubt, no skep- 
ticism in your mind as to the efficacy of prayer. 

Where men begin their prayers by piling up old, 
long, familiar, worn, empty titles; where they com- 
mence their prayers by saying, " O, Thou omnipotent, 
omniscient, omnipresent, all-seeing, ever-living, blessed 
Potentate, Lord God Jehovah ! " I should think they 
would take breath. "Why," it is asked, "are not 
such titles as these right?" Yes ; but what should be 
the state of a man's mind when he can fill up such big 
words as these with the reality of their meaning? 
That there are extreme moods, that there are great 
and critical times, when God has, by the breaths of 
heaven and the currents of earth, moved men in the 
higher elements; that there are periods when these 
words are as majestic as God Himself in the souls of 
men, there is no doubt; but think of a man in his fam- 
ily, hurried for his breakfast or to get away to his busi- 
ness, praying in such a strain ! He has a note coming 
due, and it is going to be paid to-day; and he feels 
buoyant, and goes down on his knees like a cricket on 
the hearth, and piles up these majestically moving 
phrases about God. Then he goes on to say, with 
hasty formality, that he is a sinner. Yes, he is proud 
to say that he is a sinner. He goes with the multi- 
tude in this respect. Then he asks that he may be 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 107 

forgiven, and that his heart may be changed. And 
then he asks for his daily bread. He has it; and he 
can always ask for it when he has it. After running 
on thus briefly in the old stereotyped way, he winds 
up with, " For thine is the kingdom, and the power 
and the glory, forever and forever, Amen ". Then he 
jumps up, and goes over to the city, and attends to his 
business affairs. At night he comes back, and if he is 
not disturbed by sleepiness, by company or something 
else, he has evening prayers; but he never thinks of 
approaching his Father in heaven in any other than 
this hard, formal, matter-of-fact way. And he is called 
a "praying man!" I should sooner call myself an 
ornithologist because I ate a chicken once in a while 
for my dinner. In outside affairs, does occasion- 
ally having something to do with them constitute an 
acquaintance wdth them t Does any man really pray 
who does not know the inner man that belongs to his 
nature.? Does any man pray in reality who has not a 
consciousness of God present with him 1 He that 
goes to God " must believe that He is, and that He is 
a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him". How 
large is the interpretation of that saying! He that 
goes to God, goes to One whom the heavens cannot 
contain, nor the earth, which is His footstool. How 
lordly is the soul that mounts up into some sort of con- 
ception of the amplitude, the grandeur, the glory and 
the desirableness of the Father in heaven ! 

Prayer works not on narrow lines. It consists not 



io8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

simply of asking for something. It works through a 
celestial magnetizing of the whole soul. It lifts a man 
above the infirmities of the flesh. It brings him into 
the region of supernal power. It gives him the inspi- 
ration of God Himself. 

God answers prayer just as in Nature he answers the 
wishes of the husbandman. He makes the clouds to 
rain, and the sun to shine ; and forth from the earth 
come ten thousand voices of birds and insects, singing 
and chirping, making the air vocal, and filling our 
hearts full of song. 

And all things grow and flourish under the influence 
of the great vivifying Force of Nature. So when we 
walk with God, and live with Him, our prayers are 
answered, whatever we may ask for, because to love, 
all things are lawful. We pray for whatever we want, 
because we love God, because we are near to Him, 
because we adore Him, and because we are enraptured 
with the thought of His glory; and he sends answers 
to our prayers through ourselves, and outside of our- 
selves, in ten thousand ways. It is not half so much 
importance that we should know how the thing comes, 
as that we should know that the thing does come — 
peace, rest, purity, hope, aspiration, courage in dark- 
ness, insight into the life to come; the prolongation 
of our manhood into the eternal sphere, that we may 
feel the crown before ever it is put upon our head ; 
that we may hear songs before ever they are uttered 
by us, sung by those who await us in heaven. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 109 






That which is immortal in us has not time to ripen 
in the short summer of this world. 



* 
* * 



Generosity is kindness drawn out by the sight of 
need. It is the ministration of our senses in the work 
of kindness. Liberality provides for that need which 
is not seen, which our superior reason foresees or 
imagines. One acts as an emotion, the other as a 
judgment. The one is of the heart, the other is of the 
intellect as well as of the heart. One moves in a cir- 
cuit of material things, the other is aeriform. The 
conjunction of the two furnishes the noblest form of 
benevolence — that which works both by sight and by 
faith. 

Generosity is a glorious thing, but it is not every- 
thing; it is inferior to liberality, and certainly it is 
inferior to both liberality and generosity. Liberality 
for the husband, generosity for the wife ; that is, they 
ought to be married to each other, and then they form 
a perfect unity. 

# 

Generosity works by sight; liberality works by 
faith. 



no THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Never deliberate on your word, but let it go as the 
arrow goes to the target — let it strike and stand. 



^ 



Words are but the bannerets of a great army; 
thoughts are the main body of the future. Words 
show here and there a little gleam in the air, but the 
great multitude of thoughts march unseen below. 



* 



How much of thought there is in cultivated men ! 
How much of thought that goes for thin language ! 
But how much more thought that never rides in the 
chariot of language ! How much men think day by 
day that is only thinking !' 

In my orchards to-day, there are, I think, on single 
cherry-trees thousands of blossoms ; and probably all 
but about a hundred or two of those will drop without 
a cherry having formed under them. Men are like 
such trees. They breed thoughts by the millions, that 
result in action only in the scores and the hundreds. 
How much of thought and feeling is there, and what 
an incessant work is going on within the sensorium of 
the body, among men ! How many angers, how many 
griefs, how many hopes, how many wishes, how many 
purposes; what ranges of speculation, what building 
of plans, some on the ground, and some in the air! 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. iii 

What wonderful goods are being woven — more won- 
derful than by the Jacquard loom — in the manufactory 
of the head ; and yet how little ever comes forth into 
the merchant's salesroom, how little is ever visible! 
We think, I suppose, a hundred times more than we 
ever put into action, or put into language, into visible 
exponential form. 

Folk's good and bad is like a board-teeter — if one 
end goes up, t'other is sure to go down. 



* * 



No person is born great. If a man becomes great, 
it is by that struggle in life by which he develops 
himself. 

# * 

Greatness consists not in what one has, but in what 
use one makes of his possessions — not in capacity, 
but in a right exercise of that capacity. 






Doubt and faith "are born twins, and you have no 
right to separate them. They ought to recognize each 
other. Doubt of things past is simply clearing the 
way to a brighter and a nobler future ; and since with 
the spirit of knowledge, old things are passing away, 



112 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

let us thank God, and only ask that the doubters may 
become the new men of a generation of faith. 

Right in front of my house I have a beech-tree. 
All winter long, because its leaves were so beautiful 
during the summer, it holds on to them. In January 
they are there; in February they are there; in March 
they are there. In May the tree begins to grow and 
one after the other the leaves begin to drop. There 
is nothing that will undo the old dead leaf that has no 
juice in it, so quickly as growth in the tree. When 
men are growing, the old leaves begin to drop off. It 
is not a sign of decadence ; it is a sign that summer is 
coming, that the tree is growing larger, and the gloss 
on the old leaves is a mere prophecy of the coming of 
new ones, fresher ones, brighter ones. 



* 



The skepticism of honest men unfolds the truth, and 
becomes the conviction of the after-time. The unbe- 
lief of to-day is the faith of to-morrow. 

Paul was a moral genius. There are moral geniuses 
just as much as there are musical or artistic. Prayer 
is as much an original gift of genius with many men as 
poetry is with others. Spiritual insight is a gift ; that 
is, some men have genius in that direction. Some 
men have genius in dealing with matter, and some 
have genius in the direction of mind or formative 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 1T3 

power. Paul was a genius in every direction, and one 
of the most wonderful moral natures which ever came 
upon earth. 

Science is a cane, religion is the man that walks 
with it, and helps himself along the rough road of life. 






The future is not in danger from the revelations 
of science. Science is Truth. Truth loves truth. 
Changes must come, and old things must pass away, 
but no tree sheds its leaf until it has rolled up a bud 
at its axil, for the next summer. 



* 

* * 



Science is but the deciphering of God's thought as 
revealed in the structure of this world ; it is a mere 
translation of God's primitive revelation. If to reject 
God's revelation of the Book is infidelity, what is it to 
reject God's revelation of Himself in the structure of 
the whole globe ? There is as much infidelity in regard 
to the great history that science unfolds to-day, as 
there is in regard to the record of the Book — and 
more ! The primitive prefatory revelation of the 
structural thought of God in preparing a dwelling for 
the human race — is that nothing? Man had a cradle 
represented to antiquity as the poetical Eden ; but the 
globe itself had a different Eden — one of fire, convul- 



114 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

sions, clouds and storms, of grinding ice and biting 
chemistry preparing the soil. 






I believe that in our day God is revealing Himself 
by the hands of the natural philosophers. I am not 
alarmed at what may be called the personal infidelity 
of these men. They are all workers together, though 
they do not know it. 

Go with me to a silk factory, and take down one of 
the most exquisite pieces of silk and unroll it. Oh, 
what a beautiful pattern ! What fineness of texture ! 
What exquisite colors! What magnificent figures! 
Why, it is charming ! 

Now let us see how it is made. We will go back 
step by step till we come to the loom where it was 
woven. W^e see this machine, that does not know 
what it is doing, throwing its shuttles by some opera- 
tion which it cannot understand. Let us go further 
back. We see men in one of the rooms punching 
holes here and there in a pasteboard card, according 
to some plan which has been devised ; and these holes 
mean figures. When the fabric is put on the loom in 
the proper way, in certain places given colors and 
given threads come out, according to these holes. 
The idea that they have any relation to the making of 
that silk, or helping to make it, seems perfectly absurd. 
But go further back, and you will find men spinning 
silk, and working on little bits of thread; and if you 
are told that they are making such a fabric as that. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 115 

you say, "They are not; they are spinning single 
threads". What they are doing has not the sUghtest 
relation, apparently, to the fabric. Go back further 
yet, and you will find men up to their elbows in nasty- 
looking dye-stuff, in a badly smelling room, and all 
smouched themselves. I say, "You recollect those 
exquisite colors which you saw; those men are making 
them". On going further back we find boys and girls, 
six, eight or ten of them, winding up little bits of films 
from yellow cocoons. These boys are talking and 
laughing with each other, and I say, " They are work- 
ing for that silk fabric". "Do not tell me any such 
stuff as that ! " 

I take you one step further back. We go into the 
cocoonery where there is craunching that sounds like 
rain falling on a roof, and I show you millions of little 
ugly-looking worms, and say, "These are the folks, 
after all, that are making the silk". "What! these 
worms.'*" "Yes, these worms." 

Now, then, take a Christian, according to the ordi- 
nary acceptation of that term. A Christian in this 
world is — well, a minister, or a deacon, that knows all 
theology, and keeps Sunday, and observes all the pro- 
prieties of the sanctuary, and lives an admirable, 
blameless life, and holds the faith of the Church 
exactly right. Men look on such a man, and sav, 
" There, that is what I call a regular churchman, and 
a good Christian man ". I present to them Herbert 
Spencer ; and they say, " W^hat ! that outrageous skep- 
tic, Herbert Spencer.? He, mentioned in the same 
day with that excellent Christian man — ^that admir- 



ii6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

able churchman?" I present to them John Stuart 
Mill. "Why!" they say, ''he did not believe in a 
God, even." So these worms did not know they were 
making silk. They did not believe in silk. If you 
had told them about silk they could not have under- 
stood you. 

What fools you are ! What a fool I am ! What 
fools all men are ! How preposterously we reason 
about things ! Do you suppose everything in the 
world is going to run according to your pendulum.? 
Is there not a common scheme which regulates the 
affairs of this globe.'' And are not all men working in 
obedience to that scheme, and working in their own 
way, God being the great Architect .'' Is not every- 
body working, whether he knows it or not, toward 
the final consummation of things. 

If religion is the truth of God in its essence and 
absolute reality, it never can be rubbed out ; and I am 
not afraid. Those who work most to rub it out are 
often those who do most to diffuse it, and cleanse it, 
and bring it into power. 

One may imagine a musical instrument left in some 
old castle deserted during political revolutions, stand- 
ing warped and cracked with heat and dampness — 
unstrung, untuned and voiceless. But at length the 
owner returns, and the tuner is summoned to put the 
instrument in order. He lifts the cover and the dust 
rolls back in clouds. "Ah!" he says, "it is a noble 
instrument, by the grandest of makers." 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 117 

He strikes a chord — a hideous discord, rather — 
which drives all hearers from the place. And now, as 
he begins to screw and turn, to bring up each key to 
its proper pitch, what wailings and screechings fill the 
room. People would say, "That a musical instru- 
ment?" But the tuner says, "Wait, all will be right 
in time ! " And when the long work is completed and 
he sits down to draw forth from those strings some 
melody, or one of Beethoven's majestic harmonies, 
children and servants flock to listen in amazement and 
wonder. Thus it is with us in this world. O, be 
patient while God is tuning you. Now the wailing and 
the discord, by and by the full and perfect harmony. 



* 



Troubles are like mosquitoes. Some nervous peo- 
ple spend far more effort to drive off little insect trials 
than would be needed to bear them. Why do they 
not pray, "Lord, let Thy grace be sufficient for me".'* 
That is a piece of armor that would cover them from 
head to foot. It is a great deal better to bear trouble 
than to get rid of trouble. 






There are many men that will not get away from 
trouble when they can. If there is trouble in one 
room, they will not so much as go into another room 
to avoid it. A wise man, when he finds himself in a 
room where there is trouble, goes out of it as soon as 



ii8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

possible. Now God has put at least thirty rooms in a 
man's mind, and if there is trouble in one, he can go 
up to the next one, and if the trouble comes into that, 
he can go up to the next, and if necessary, he can 
keep going up-stairs till he gets upon the roof; and 
the higher he goes, the more tired will troubles get of 
flying up after him. 

Troubles are like mists that fill a river valley in an 
Autumn morning, hanging chilly and damp upon the 
hillsides until the sun gets high in the heavens, then 
swaying, wreathing, opening, they melt away at length 
into the clear air. As the sun is to the mists so is the 
soul of man to his troubles, when touched and inspired 
of God. When from the heights of faith and hope we 
look steadily down into our sorrows, they quickly take 
to themselves wings and fly away. 



* 

^ ^ 



Manhood is the most precious fruit of trouble. 
There is but one tree in this world that bears true, 
full manhood. You cannot go and take any tree and 
plant it at hazards, and get spitzenbergs from it. If 
you want spitzenbergs, you must plant a tree that will 
bear spitzenbergs ; and if you want russets, you must 
plant a tree that bears russets. There is one tree, 
and only one, that bears true manhood; and if you 
want true manhood, you must have that tree. And 
that tree is trouble. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 119 



# 



Nothing is half so inedicinal for our troubles as 
benevolent sympathy and occupation in the troubles of 
others. This is the true moral recreation. 






Sorrows are gardeners ; they plant flowers along 
waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps. 
The common duties of life, unblessed, are but as 
fences of stone, or timber; but blessed with sorrow, 
each stake carries its twining morning-glory, and 
mosses picture the stones, and glowing ampelopsis 
tufts the walls with its autumnal red. 






Forbearance, courage, toughness, endurance, the 
ability to meet trouble and not be vanquished by it, 
but tranquilly rejoice in it, are elements of manhood. 






Among the branches, now clearly seen, is a nest, 
hidden all summer by green leaves, all the autumn by 
golden ones — a nest, an empty nest ! When it was a 
home, and gay birds inhabited it, green leaves hid 
from dangerous eyes the treasure. When its work 
was done, golden leaves hid its emptiness. The tree 
is bare, the nest is empty, November days are chill; 



120 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

but the birds hatched therein have flown over hill and 
over field, and are singing far away upon the southern 
trees. They will come back ! Next summer the leaves 
will hide again the nest, and the merry brood will 
come again from it. Yet empty nests there are, to 
which will come again no wing, no song. Too well 
they flew, and were carried clear over into the eternal 
summer. " I shall go to him, but he will not return 
unto me." Thus spoke the kingly singer of Israel, 
and ten thousand hearts repeat the solemn liturgy. 

I do not know what my children will be to me when 
I am in heaven; but this one thing I know, that the 
heavenly experience will not be behind the earthly 
one. I shall find them; they will find me; and they 
will be more to me there than they ever were here. 
I do not know how, but there was a wonderful hold 
upon my soul of the little children that could do noth- 
ing but love, and that but faintly. The wound — how 
deep it was ! how long in healing ! and how, while 
it was yet unhealed, I thought, " I cannot spare them. 
They will grow up; they will be full grown; but I 
want my children, I want my children." 

You do not know what the wondrous elasticity and 
versatility of disembodied existence is. You do not 
know but your children will come to you and be more 
children than ever they were, except in stature and 
capacity. All that has made them sweet and lovely 
to \o\x may be more than ever, along with an aureola, 
a coronal light of love and beauty. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 121 






Do you ever notice the dandelion when it first 
comes up in the spring, and is nothing but a mat of 
little, flat and homely leaves, lying snugly on the 
ground ? A few days of summer sun will bring out 
the plaited bud, nippled in the soil. In a few days 
more, it will lift itself higher, and open its golden cir- 
cle. It is now born; and so are our children born to 
us. Wait yet a few days, and that blossom is shut up. 
Its beauty is gone. Wait a few days again, and out it 
comes once more. But now it is an airy globe. White 
as pearl and exquisite in form, as no compass could 
score it. An ethereal globe it is. The wind could 
blow it away. And such are our children. They have 
gone from us, beautiful to the last. Through all ages 
they shall live, and bud and blossom. They have been 
wafted away to the celestial sphere, where they are 
singing, and shall sing forever and forever. Sons of 
God are your children, and they are with God. 



* 
* * 



Not any bower of roses is so festooned in June. 
Not where the jessamine and honeysuckle twine, and 
lovers sit, is there so fair a sight, so sweet a prospect, 
as where a soul, in its early years, is flying away out of 
life, and out of time, through the gate of death — the 
rosy gate of death, the royal gate of death, the golden 
gate of death, the pearly gate of death. 



122 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 






I think God makes men, in some respects, as He 
makes tulips. In the autumn of the year the next 
year's blossom is stored up, all ready to come forth, 
and there is food enough in it to get it out of the 
ground. Children are bulbs. There is parent enough 
in them to last till they can organize character for 
themselves. 






How fair is the world which Thou hast made, O 
Lord, our God ! How wonderful art Thou in Thy 
glory, and in all Thy thoughts of beauty, and in all the 
excellence which the earth doth show forth. And yet, 
where hast Thou made anything so beautiful or so full 
of sweetness as little children are ? They are of Thee 
and they bear something of Thy nature, and shall go 
back to Thee to report what history hath befallen 
them on earth. They are Thine, and they are lent to 
us. And what joy do they bring ! Though they come 
crying, how they do come to bear smiles and laughter, 
and full-handed joy ! How light is the house with 
them, and how dark it is without them ! How full of 
strength dost Thou make their little weakness to those 
who are called to take care of them! How in nourish- 
ing them do we nourish ourselves ! How in teaching 
them do we ourselves learn ! How we are taught what 
God is by that which He makes us to be by those 
little ones that are so dear to us. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 123 



* 



Children don't come up and blossom first like hya- 
cinths and that great red amaryllis. They are like 
laylocks and honeysuckle, that grow a year or two 
before they get a place for blossoms to stand on. 






We are apt to put too many blades in our knives 
nowadays. I would rather give a boy a handle and 
let him put in his own blade. There is nothing like 
working out a thing yourself. Lead is as good as 
steel when the knife is in your pocket. Put it to hard 
work and see which keeps its edge — that tells the dif- 
ference between good temper and none at all. 






No poet, no philosopher, can tell what is the rich- 
ness and fruitfulness and wonder of the imagination 
that hovers over a Christian woman's cradle. To her, 
the star of the East comes again to stand over where 
the young child lies. To her, the wise men of the 
earth might well come, bearing offerings and incense. 
To her, again are renewed all the scenes of the sacred 
stable where the Child lay. The cradle is her temple, 
the baby is her Divinity. And whatever reason can, 
and whatever fancy can, when both of them are stimu- 
lated by profoundest love, whatever there is near or 
far, present or to come, that love is woman's. " Mary 



124 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

kept these things in her heart and pondered them." 
The pondering of a mother! If it could be written, if 
there were any angelic reporter band to take the best 
thoughts and the sweetest fancies, and if the life of a 
mother's heart could be written in those early brood- 
ing days, it would shine fit to be read in the libraries 
of the heavenly world itself. Human nature never 
comes so near to the Divine, as when a royal woman 
pours out the full flood of her thought and fancy and 
love to the little unheeding, and to her, as yet, useless 
child. Where else is she so beautiful as when she sits 
in the center of this mystic circle, as when she sings to 
her babe, or gazes silently as it feeds upon her bosom ? 
The stars have nothing so bright, and the heavens 
scarcely anything more pure and more holy than the 
heavenly love-service of a mother to her little helpless 
and unfashioned child. 



* 
* * 



Some people seem to think that a child is like a 
farm, and cannot be pulverized too much ; and so 
they plough it, and harrow it, and cross it, and turn it 
up and down as it does not like to be turned. 






Wedded love has its burdens and exceptions. The 
cradle none. We love and are loved again ; we pass 
through the dream of early love when all is paradisi- 
acal ; and at last, according to the old myth, we fall, 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 125 

and discover that our angel was human. It was a 
pure and perfect diamond! Alas! some day there are 
flaws found in it. Henceforth we bear and forbear; 
we suffer that we may love. Not so the cradle. 
There is no dross in that gold ; there is no commerce 
there ; there is no giving and taking. The heart, like 
a smitten rock, flows with a pure and undiminished 
stream, even in the deserts of poverty. There is no 
love that is so spontaneous that hath in it so little of 
the influence and motive which actuates every other 
part of life, as the simple, indispensable, irresistible 
love which parents have for new-born children, and at 
every step onward until they begin to be men and 
women. 

You can't tell by the way a bean comes up what 
sort of leaves it's goin' to have afterwards. Some 
children are like poke-weed. When it first comes up 
it's just as good to bile as 'sparagus. But in a few 
weeks it's so strong it would drive ye out of the house, 
if you was to put it in the pot. 






If every child might live the life pre-destined in a 
mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the 
coflin, they would walk upon a beam of light, and 
shine in glory. Alas ! some are born like the dande- 
lion — glowing bright, soon changing to a fairy globe, 
and by the first wind dashed out and gone ! Paint 



126 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the man as the mother's thoughts do ; then paint him 
as he really Uved ! Hang the two portraits side by 
side, and write, "What he was to be!" and then, 
" What he was ! " Life has no sadder contrast. 



* 
*= * 



As men whose lamp has gone out are in the dark- 
ness of familiar rooms, and grope and know not how 
to find their way, so dost Thou often by sorrow 
bewilder Thy people ; and yet, speak unto them, O 
God ! that they may know that Thou art present, and 
that they may rejoice in the midst of great pain and 
suffering. 

We are not to covet or seek pain ; but we are not to 
dodge it when it comes. We should feel that God 
puts confidence in us when He lays a heavy burden 
upon us. A general sends no coward to perform the 
most difficult enterprises. 






No prayer was so richly answered, as when Christ 
pleaded, "Let this cup pass from me." God said, no ; 
but sent an angle to strengthen Him. Paul besought 
the Lord thrice, that his thorn in the flesh might be 
removed. God said, no; but, better than that, gave 
him grace to bear it. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 127 



* 
* * 



The quality and extent of suffering depends not half 
so much on the exciting causes of it, as upon the 
nature of the faculty which suffers. It is the power 
of suffering that is inherent in any faculty that meas- 
ures suffering, and not the magnitude of the aggres- 
sion which is made outwardly. For there are many 
who will stand up and have their name battered as if 
they were but a target almost without suffering, the 
nature and quality of the love of praise in them being 
such that it is not wounded nor hurt ; while there are 
others to whom the slightest disparagement is like a 
poisoned arrow, and rankles with exquisite suffering. 
There be men who all their life long walk under an 
arch that rains down abuse, and care nothing for it; 
and there are others who, if touched, as it were, but 
by the point of a needle, are inoculated with incurable 
agony. It is the quality of a faculty that determines 
how much one suffers by it. 



* 



A stroke of a pound weight upon a bell two inches 
in diameter will give forth a certain amount of sound. 
Let the bell be of one hundred pounds weight, and the 
same stroke of one pound will more than quadruple 
the amount of aerial vibration. Let the bell be 
increased to a thousand pounds, and the same stroke 
will make the reverberations vaster, and cause them to 
roll yet further. Let it be a five or ten thousand 



128 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

pound weight bell, and that stroke that made a tin- 
gling on the small bell, makes a roar on this large 
one. 

The very same quality that, being struck in a small 
being, produces a certain amount of susceptibility, 
being struck in a Being that is infinite, produces an 
infinitely greater experience, for feeling increases in 
the ratio of being. 

God uses sufi'ering as a whetstone, to make men 
sharp with. After you have made your knife sharp, 
your whetstone has served the purpose for which it 
was intended. But the ascetics seemed to think that 
if the whetstone was good to make men sharp, it was 
good to eat. And so they kept whetting till they 
ground off not only the edge, but the body of the 
blade. 

No one has suffered enough until he is patient of 
suffering. " Made perfect through suffering ! " Men 
stamped with this brand have God's mark on them. 

Being drawn out and up is the business of this life. 
The ministry of suffering is to make us more coura- 
geous, and finally, under the economy of Divine help, 
to give us victory. Why the world is made so, you 
cannot answer, nor I, any more than you can tell why 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 129 

a daisy wasn't made like a dandelion, or a dandelion 
like a sunflower. 

Pain and suffering in this world are God's merciful 
ministers to keep men in the road; they are the thorns 
cf the hedge that save a man from toppling over 
the precipice on the other side, and the scratch is 
salvation. 

* * 

I heard a conversation once, in the mountains. 
There was gold that had been wedged in among rocks, 
and had heard that gold was a wonderful thing for 
value and for beauty; and it was murmuring and say- 
ing, "Here I lie, and here I have lain for centuries; 
I am gold, and I hear stories of what gold is for value 
and for beauty and for power; but here I lie in dark- 
ness, crowded and hurt and crushed." The engineer 
says, "Well, if you want to come out and shine, you 
shall"; and there is joy in all the ledges until the 
powder explodes and they are torn to atoms, and 
thrown all round about. " Oh, oh, oh ! this is what 
you have promised us — that we should have joy, lib- 
erty and beauty." They are trundled into wagons, 
lifted with the earth, and as the light dawns on them, 
they say, " Well, it may be alleviated a little, but this 
is a hard way to answer our aspiration ". Then they 
are put down under the stamp, broken up with mallets, 
and at last ground into powder. They give up in 
despair. " If this is making us beautiful gold, we would 



I30 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 

rather go back to our ledges." Then the water takes 
out the rock, and the gold lies scattered, and it is then 
poured into a bath of quicksilver, that eats it all up; 
the gold has disappeared, the particles of quicksilver 
have got it all inside themselves. It is collected and 
carried out, and then, by heat, the quicksilver is dissi- 
pated, and the gold finds itself lying under the sky, 
pure — nearly; then it goes through the process of 
perfect purification, and, at last, it passes into the 
mint, where it takes the image and superscription of 
the government, wears the crown, carries the sceptre, 
audit is sought by all men, and is used in all places, 
and at last, through much tribulation, it enters into 
the kingdom of glory. 

You do not know what is going on, you do not 
know all the meaning of your sorrow; God does. Do 
you suppose that the wool on the sheep's back knows 
what it is coming to when it is sheared .'' When it was 
scoured and washed and spun, and twisted of its life 
almost; when it went into the hateful bath of color; 
when it was put into the shuttle, and was thrust back 
and forth, back and forth, in the darkness, and out 
came the royal robe, it did not know what it started 
for; yet that is what it comes to — kings wear it. 
The flax in the field sighs to be made into the gar- 
ment of the saints. All right. Pluck it up ; rot it, 
put it under the brick, thread it, weave it, bleach it, 
purify it; and the saints may wear it now. It came to 
honor and glory through much suffering. "Who are 
these arrayed in white 1 These are they that have 
come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 131 

and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 
Suffering is God's guardian, guiding angel to those 
that will; it takes them up through the gate of trouble 
and trial to that land of perfectness and of everlasting 
peace. 

God can suffer. I cannot worship a God that can- 
not suffer. It is not the suffering of ignominy, nor of 
physical pain, nor of the violation of law, but of sym- 
pathy. Love in its nature suffers. 






It is not meant that we should go through this life 
acting as if the world were a life-boat, to be used 
merely for snatching as many folks from destruction as 
possible, and for taking them safely to heaven. This 
world is God's university or school, where men begin 
at zero, and are to unfold and come to manhood as 
the object of God's decrees and providence and grace, 
and of the common sense which God has given to us. 






A true man is a force- bearer and a force-producer. 
I understand that when a man becomes a Christian 
he has higher ideals, larger conceptions of life here 
and of the life to come. The motives which are 
addressed to him from the bosom of God are an inspi- 
ration by which he becomes more, does more, longs 



132 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

for more, strives for more, gains more. Before, he 
lived a circumscribed life ; but now he moves out the 
walls on every side because he needs more room. 
"Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes," is 
the right text for a true man. He that is a Christian 
ought to be a hundred times larger in every way than 
he was before he became a Christian. Larger in 
every way .'' Yes ; larger every way. What ! larger 
in his passions? Yes; larger in his passions. His 
passions ought to be not only larger, but better and 
healthier. Pride ought to be stronger, only it ought 
to be in subjection to the law of love. It ought to be 
under the influence of love, auxiliary to higher things, 
and not an autocrat in its own right. Every part of a 
man's nature is to be built up, and is to be made sub- 
ordinate to love. Anything that God thought it worth 
while to put in a man, from his toe to his eyebrow, 
from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, is 
worthy of our consideration. He has not employed 
anything in the making of you that will not be needed 
for fuel. 

He that is out of concord with those motions and 
throbs of the Divine Heart that send currents of light 
through the universe, is narrowing and dwarfing him- 
self. He only is a full man who is a man in Christ 
Jesus. 

Paul was the apostle of manhood — manhood in 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 133 

Christ Jesus — He being both the iftodel and the 
inspiration. 

It is a good thing for a man, under a touching 
sermon, to experience pity; it is a better thing for a 
man never to be without it. It is a good thing, under 
song and speech, for men to be Hfted up into the 
higher regions of aspiration ; it is a better thing for a 
man to be there habitually, morning and night. It is 
a good thing for a man to have his heart touched with 
sympathy for his fellowmen ; it is a better thing for a 
man's heart to abound in that quality. It is a good 
thing for a man to have, if he be thirsty, water that 
requires a great deal of labor to pump from the deep 
well; it is better that a man should have a spring that 
is so full that it gushes forth night and day out of the 
side of the hill. The piety that comes and goes is 
better than nothing — scarcely more than that; but 
the higher spiritual qualities of a man's nature that 
abide with him, and grow stronger and throw their 
roots deeper and take hold of life with more multiplied 
hands, are the qualities that constitute the true man. 






Everybody can run down hill, but it takes a man to 
run up hill. 

Christian manhood is higher than nationality. 



134 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






A man is the grandest thing this side of God — 
should be, for he is the son of God, and the heir of 
immortality. 






Whatever you wish to become, be it first in your 
manhood. Out of power develop trustworthiness. 
Out of energy develop various skill and competency. 
When you come to a point beyond which men do not 
want you, be content to stand there. Be content to 
stand where your avoirdupois puts you. 






You should make your nobility consist in yourself 
— not in outward change; not in fictitious advance- 
ment, but in growing manhood, in a deeper conscious- 
ness, in a higher spirituality, in more manliness, 
in greater godliness, in more earnest striving after 
immortality. 






Every man is an ^gg, and he ought to hatch his real 
mankind out of himself. 






That which makes a man a better man is the best 
gift you can bestow on him. The best ointment which 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 135 

can be used to ordain the priest which is in a man, to 
ordain the God which is in a man, is to give him those 
sentiments and those aifections, and to lift him to a 
higher level in life. 

Every man that teaches himself to find the chief 
employments and enjoyments of his manhood lower 
than in his reason and moral sentiments and spirit- 
ual nature, has forsaken himself. Every man whose 
business is manual and physical, and who contents 
himself with that business, and feeds himself by noth- 
ing higher than that, is a creature that is spending his 
life forces lower than the level of true manhood. It is 
not a misfortune to be a mechanic ; but it is a misfor- 
tune to be only a mechanic. It is not a misfortune to 
be a farmer, but it is a misfortune to be nothing but a 
farmer. It is not a misfortune to be a mariner, or a 
day-laborer; but the man that labors, working with 
his hands, and never thinks any higher than his work, 
is unfortunate. It is a misfortune for a man to have 
abandoned his manhood so that the operations of his 
mere physical frame shall satisfy him. All the upper 
realm of such a man's nature has been shut up. That 
which distinguishes him in the creation of his Father, 
that which gives him the right to say, "Our Father", 
is all disused. It is as if a man inheriting a magnifi- 
cent palace, should shut up every one of the numer- 
ous apartments except the eating-room, and there live 
and feed. 



136 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 



If you have ever taken up a tree, and it was of any 
size, you know that a tree, which looks as though it 
were one stem growing out of the ground, is found to 
have, the moment you undertake to transplant it, five 
hundred stems under ground. Here is one great root, 
that you never knew anything about, by which it 
anchors itself; and there is another there; and there 
is another yonder. You take off the ground and cut 
away this root, and then shake the tree, and it stands 
just as though nothing had been done. You remove 
the earth and cut off that long anchor-root, and then 
you say, " Now it will come ". No, it will not come. 
You dig again — a little impatient — with pick and 
spade, and you find that here is another root; and 
there is another root; and as you cut them off you 
say to yoarself, "Will it never come up.-"' And you 
pull at it again. No, it will not come. And you get 
quite vexed, and you have an opportunity to get good 
natured again; for it does not come. By and by you 
say, "Well, I will see what is the matter"; and with 
the pick you strike under, and under, and under, until 
all at once, thump — you hit a great tap-root. That 
sheds new light on the subject. Here are all these sur- 
face roots that you have uncovered and cut; and find- 
ing that then the tree will not budge, you dig far under, 
and to your surprise find this tap-root; and with one 
powerful, sidelong blow you cut that oif, and the tree 
falls over, and the victory is gained ! Now, that is 
very much like transplanting a man. There are ever 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 137 

SO many roots that hold him down. All the surface 
is full of them. They run great distances in every 
direction, dividing, bifurcating, twisting underneath 
stones, and around all sorts of obstructions. And 
when all these surface roots have been cut he is not 
half ready to transplant. You must dig under and 
under, till you come to the tap-root, that was far out 
of sight, and that nobody suspected, and cut that; 
and then you can transplant the man. 






What do you suppose a crystal thinks when it is 
discovered in a rock by some prowling geologist or 
mineralogist.'* He knows that there is a wonderful 
crystal there ; and so, wdth hammer and chisel, he 
smites off great chips from the rock, carefully watch- 
ing on this side and on that, to discover the point 
where the crystal is to appear. And if the crystal is 
as ignorant as it ought to be, it murmurs because such 
violence is done to its surroundings ; because its cov- 
ering is being taken off; because its hiding-place is 
disclosed to the elements. But the rock is smitten 
right and left until the crystal comes out, when it 
shines in the rays of the sun, and is put to noble uses. 

The manhood of man is shut up in that which is 
worse than a rock — in mud, composed of all manner 
of animalism; in filth of the appetites and passions; 
and it is this manhood that is being sought by provi- 
dences that strike it here and there, cutting off this 
desire, and that pleasure; extinguishing this pride, 



138 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

and that vanity; and more and more bringing the 
man away from the lower and animal realm, to a 
higher region, where he sees the lustre of those virtues 
which bring him into affinity, and which will finally 
bring him into contact, with God. 






Aspire, find out the source of your Christ-life, and 
grow in grace. Knowledge comes from likeness. Put 
on Jesus Christ as a garment. Eat Him as bread; 
drink Him as wine, or the water of life. Be Christ; 
not in the sphere of the Infinite, but in the sphere of 
your own personality. Then, knowing Him, give forth 
the word of life and the light of life, that men, seeing 
you, may glorify your Father which is in heaven. 



* 



Every true man is like the true Christ that is in 
him. There is something of the earth with which he 
treads upon the ground and with which he deals with 
things as they are ; there are also high celestial facul- 
ties that commune with God and with the invisible 
realm ; and the perfect character is the one which 
combines them both. 

There are many fine natures hidden under coarse 
forms. Powerful impressions are produced on many 
who cannot resolve them into ideas, and still less fash- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 139 

ion them to words. Along the furrow, by the work- 
bench, in the chamber, or in the kitchen, have been 
thousands silently plying the unknown with as solemn 
an earnestness as that of those who write books to 
prove how little man can know of the Unknowable. 






When you cry out for God, he will cry out for you. 

There was never a heart homesick for heaven, that 

heaven was not homesick for it. Never did a soul 
long for God, that God did not long for that soul. 






Have you ever been among the songsters on the 
edge of a forest in June, and heard the warblers sing- 
ing, and the sparrows chirping, and the blue-birds' 
exquisite little lady-note ? If, during a chorus of 
birds' voices, a hawk in the air, so high as not to 
throw a shadow on the ground, should but once 
scream, every little voice would be hushed. One note 
up there is enough to put to silence five hundred notes 
down here. So it is in the human soul. Men have 
all manner of ecstacies; but let there be one hawk- 
note struck, and it will put all these ecstasies and joys 
to flight. 

There are multitudes that are like my Wisteria — a 
plant of the loveliest habit, which you shall see in the 



MO THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

early spring abundantl)'', in the cities and in the 
country. When transplanted it is very apt to be 
obstinate and to refuse to grow. I planted it early, 
and I got a little dwarf, stumpy vine, tree-like, not 
two feet high. I waited one year, two years, three 
years, four years, until I got out of all patience with 
it, and I said to the gardener, "Take it up; throw it 
away". He took it up, but not to throw it away. He 
planted it in a more favorable corner, where something 
happened, I know not what, in the mystery of nature, 
and the very next year it broke its bonds and sent up 
its vine, and clasped and clambered and covered all 
the end of the house, and ran up on to the adjacent 
trees, and filled the whole air with its perfume and 
with the beauty of its blossom. Multitudes of men 
there are just like it, hving so near the ground, and 
without any aspiration, that they never know what 
they are, in themselves, and to what their possibili- 
ties lead up — never. 

Vanity makes us wish to be superior to others, moral 
aspiration to be superior to ourselves. 



* 



While the practical is an indispensable part of the 
mind, that life in the soul which never has an expo- 
nent of words or deeds, is the noblest. The heroism, 
the enthusiasms, the silent thought and holy aspira- 
tions, God regards as the best part of the soul. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 141 






True aspiration is not to wish to be different from 
what God has made us, but to be able to develop all 
that He has put into us. 



* 
* *■ 



As a lake, when all the streams have emptied their 
fulness into it, when first it sees the ray and feels the 
warmth of the sun, begins to rise toward it in mists 
and exhalations, so the heart filled with all that earth 
can supply, when first it lies consciously in the pres- 
ence of God, aspires toward him, sets with all its tides 
in that direction. 






What we call yearning is the heart of God drawing 
us heavenward. 






Even the poor mute root in the cellar, that lies all 
winter long — the turnip, or the potato — dead, yet 
knows when April and May come, knows that there is 
a sun out-side, and begins to sprout, and finds its way, 
growing in the dark with long, long vines; and if 
there be a slit or a crack, it will work toward the 
light; and shall not I, that am no root nor vegetable, 
no matter through what winters, find my way toward 
the great Center of warmth and light? If there is 
summer in heaven I will find it. Though I be 



142 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

plunged into the depths of hell, I long for such a God 
as is manifest by Jesus Christ; and I will find Him. 
I shall see Him for myself, and not another for me. I 
shall be like him yet, though it may be myriads of 
ages hence. 

The whole man, in orderly succession, unfolds 
through successive stages. The kingdom of God is 
the highest stage. That is the blossom of all the 
rest. We are made perfect men in Christ Jesus. 
Before that time we are raw, unripe, undeveloped, 
undisclosed ; we are plants that grow in a clime so 
far north that the summer is not warm enough nor 
long enough to show what they are in their higher 
development. 

The growth of the Church is not by the numbers 
that are in it, but by the graces, the beauty of holiness, 
the variety and ripeness of Christian feeling character. 
These are signs of growth. Whatever tends to make 
men, looking upon you, revere you, esteem you, love 
you, whatever lifts their conception of your spiritual 
excellence, gives strength to the Church. 



* 
* * 



Many persons boil themselves down to a kind of 
molasses goodness. It is not such goodness as there 
is in the live peach, in the luscious apple, or in the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 143 

delicious pear. It is not such goodness as has in it 
the power and the sharpness which belong to a combi- 
nation of acid and sweet. It is inspirated goodness. 
It is partial goodness, joined to feebleness, caution, 
fear. 

How many persons are in the world as flies that 
have been caught in some sweet liquid, that have got 
out at last upon the side of the cup, drabbled, and 
crawl up slowly, buzzing a little to clear their wings! 
Just such Christians I have seen, creeping up the 
side of churches, soul-poor, imperfect, without inspi- 
ration, and drabbled. If it must needs be so, that is 
better than nothing; it is better than to die without 
moral rebound ; but this is not the whole career. You 
are called to manliness, and to strength, and to variety, 
and to development. You are called to an allsidedness 
in Christian life. 

To avoid evil is good only so far as it impels you to 
perform the right ; only so far as it leads you to grow 
in the direction of true manliness. 

What would you account that husbandry to be 
worth which succeeded only in keeping down weeds .'' 
A man goes on ploughing and ploughing, harrowing 
and harrowing, hoeing and hoeing; and he rejoices, 
as July comes on, saying, "There is not a weed on 
my farm — not a weed". Round and round he goes, 
looking into every corner, and under every hedge, to 



144 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

spy out any weeds that may have been left ; and he 
says, '* Not one weed shall grow on this farm ". But 
where is thy corn, O farmer? "I have no corn."' 
Where is thy wheat? "I have no wheat." Where 
are thy fruits? "I have no fruits." What hast thou? 
"No weeds!" 

How many there are who are circumspect, and are 
in earnest, not only, but whose whole care is not to 
speak a wrong word, nor speak a word in the wrong 
place ! The result is, that they succeed in doing 
nothing. Their life is comparatively rapid and void, 
because they have adapted themselves and confined 
themselves to one single element. They violate no 
propriety, but they are living negative instead of pos- 
itive lives. 

Any man that has ceased to grow is waiting for his 
undertaker ; and the longer he has to wait the greater 
is the pity for everybody about him ; for the fruitf ul- 
ness of benefiting life goes with this onward move- 
ment — this enlargement which we call growth. 



* 



No man has a right to be a puddle. Every man is 
bound to have a life that flows and cleanses itself by 
its own activity. No man has a right to rust. Every 
man is bo-und to keep his faculties bright by incessant 
use. No man has a right to stand paralyzed. Every 
man is bound to grow. The Divine conception is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 145 

transfer of power from the animal to the spiritual man, 
the development in the spiritual man of the highest 
ideals ; and then the strife and struggle of life is to lift 
one's self up through every stage of education until he 
reaches that highest form of intellectual and moral 
development — perfect manhood, the perfect man in 
Christ Jesus. 

The order of Christian development is much like 
the kindling of a fire. When a man has been brought 
up about right by his parents, indoctrinated in and 
trained to Christian morality, and steadily and gradu- 
ally made to raise the standard of his convictions 
higher and higher, he is like kindling prepared in a 
fire-place, with light wood and dry fuel; and when 
religion just touches a match to it, it blazes right up 
at once. 

But where men are very ignorant and very gross, 
religion is much like kindling a fire in old Connecticut 
when I was a boy. Every night I lugged in snow-clad 
logs of green oak, and such material for kindling as I 
could manage to get; and coming down in the morn- 
ing, every finger numb, and shivering all over in those 
great winters of Connecticut — a little State, but big 
winters — and with but a few coals gathered, the mak- 
ing of the fire was a very artistic and delicate process. 
The match kindled the shaving, and the shaving kin- 
dled the splinter, and the stick had to be kindled by 
the splinter — just a light, dry splinter, the smallest 
wood that I could get — and then, when the fire had 



146 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

begun to get hold, volumes of blue smoke rolled up 
the chimney — what I didn't breathe. A little more, 
and a little more fuel, had statedly to be put on, until 
by and by a smudgy faint flame began to appear, and 
then, with bellows in hand, 'I applied the means of 
the gospel. There is a contest, and it is doubtful 
which will conquer; but at length the flame makes 
way, and the smoke grows thinner, and the flame 
becomes broader, until by and by it has penetrated 
the whole mass, and the log sings at each end, expel- 
ling the sap by the growing flame, and, at length, the 
light blazes in all of the chimneys, and sends back the 
children that huddled around it at first, and the whole 
room is full of light and red heat. The fire is kin- 
dled, and the glory of it is felt in the whole house. 

That is just about the way some men come from a 
state of sinfulness to a state of grace. It is pretty 
hard kindling them, they are pretty tough, and they 
are full of sap, and they are covered with habits of 
snow and ice, and the first ideas they get of religion 
are very faint ones ; and they fight with old passions 
and appetites; but by the blowing of the gospel con- 
tinuously, you can keep it going ; and if by faith and 
patience you continue it long enough, the whole soul 
begins to be on fire, and when it is once on fire the 
the light and warmth pervade the whole dwelling. 

All true religious growth is toward sweetness. Mild- 
ness and sweetness are the characteristics of ripeness. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 147 

If, therefore, you find that one is more stringent, more 
sharp, more consciously greedy as he grows in Chris- 
tian Hfe, you may be sure that he took the wrong 
shoot. He is not growing the right way. 

There are a great many men like one of my roses. 
I bought a Gloire de Dijon. It was said to be one of 
the few ever-blooming roses. It was grafted on a 
mannetti stalk — a kind of dog-rose, a rampant and 
enormous grower, and a very good stalk to graft fine 
roses on. I planted it. It throve the first part 
of the summer, and the last part of the summer 
it grew with great vigor; and I quite gloried, when 
the next spring came, in my Gloire de Dijon. It 
had wood enough to make twenty such roses as these 
finer varieties usually have ; and I was in the ampli- 
tude of triumph. I said, " My soil suits it exactly in 
this climate, and I will write an article for the Monthly 
Gardener., and tell what luck I have had with it." So 
I waited and waited, and waited till it blossomed ; and 
behold ! it was one of those worthless, quarter-of-a- 
dollar, single-blossomed roses. And when I came to 
examine it, I found that it was grafted, and that there 
was a little bit of a graft down near the ground, and 
that it was the mannetti sprout that had grown to 
such a prodigious size. 

Now I have seen a great many people converted, in 
whom the conversion did not grow, but the old nature 
did. A man may be a Christian, you know, in a spot; 
and growth in that spot should be such as to keep 
down nature. The whole power of the root should be 
thrown into the new scion, which should make the 



148 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

Stem and the top. If, therefore, you see a man that 
is sharp, and full of thorns, you may be sure that it is 
a mannetti stalk that is growing, and not a Gloire 
de Dijon — nor a Gloire de Jerusalem, either! It is 
nature, and not grace. For just as sure as God is 
love, so sure they that are His children, and that are 
growing according to the new nature in Christ Jesus, 
are growing toward gentleness and sweetness, and 
easy-to-be-entreatedness. They are full of love, and 
the fruits of love. An eminent development in grace 
is an eminent development toward gentleness and 
sweetness and agreeableness. 



* 



Your trying and waiting are not in vain, as you will 
see by and by. There is another life besides this, 
which you are going to live in. What you are doing 
here you will not know till you get there. 






When we come into the fullness of knowledge in the 
presence of God, all that we know on earth will seem 
to us like child-shadows. In the grandeur of the final 
development, all the twilight knowledge that we have 
in this world shall seem to flit away in the rising sun 
itself. 

When I see in the spring the trees full of bud and 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 149 

ready to bloom in the orchard, I hear complaint in the 
outside green coating of the bud, that has wrapped it 
up like an overcoat, and carried it through the winter. 
As the balmy atmosphere begins to expand the bud, I 
hear the sepal mourn and say, "Alas, alas! I am being 
expelled and pushed down ; the hinges are breaking 
off, I have got to drop." And go it does in some high 
wind ; but it goes in order that the blossom may live. 
Then after a little while I hear the blossom say, "I 
have got to fall" — and fall it does, to the ground, in 
order that the fruit may spring forth. iVnd when men 
mourn because they are losing this faculty and that 
faculty, they forget that they are failing here in order 
that glorious virtues and perfect holiness may emerge 
to ripen forever in heaven. Yes, it is a glorions thing 
to believe in a life to come. This is what I call the 
true practical theology of human life. 



* 
^ * 



We do not make the first and last experiment here. 
We are not going to waste the whole of this life, dying 
at death and going out into darkness. We shall live 
again, and live under better influences. This is, or 
ought to be, a consolation to those who have no oppor- 
tunities here which are fitting to their nature. 



* 
* * 



I cannot be one of those who think that this world 
is all there is of the manifestation of the glory of God. 



150 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

I would sooner think that all the majestic pines that 
frown from the ridges of California are contained in a 
seed no bigger than a pea. That seed has to be 
planted, and it must develop. This world, with its 
poverty, with its ignorance, with its grinding customs 
— is that all there is? Much as there is of God made 
manifest in this world — is it all? God forbid that I 
should impoverish the conception of His great provi- 
dence by limiting it to the possibilities of this life. 

This glorious vision, this hope and everlasting sure- 
ty of the future, how shallow were life without it, and 
how deep beyond all fathoming with it ! The threads 
that broke in the loom here shall be taken up there. 
The veins of gold that penetrate this mighty mountain 
of Time and Earth, shall then have forsaken the rock 
and dirt, and shine in a sevenfold purity. All those 
wrongly estranged and separated; and all who, with 
great hearts, seeking good for men, do yet fall out and 
contend ; and all they who bear about hearts of earnest 
purpose, longing to love, and to do, but hindered and 
baulked, and made to -carry hidden fire in their souls 
that warms no one, but only burns the censor; and all 
they who are united for mutual discomfort; and all 
who are separated that should have walked together; 
and all that inwardly or outwardly live in a dream all 
their days, longing for the dawn and the waking — to 
all such how blessed. is the dawn of the Resurrection! 
The stone is rolled away, and angels sit upon it; and 
all who go groping toward the grave to search for that 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 151 

which is lost, shall hear their voices teaching them 
chat Heaven harvests and keeps whatever of good the 
earth loses. 

When God sends wealth to bless men, he sends it 
gradually, like a gentle rain. 

* * 

There are two things about riches — one is to catch 
them, another is to hold them. I have seen many a 
man get money as a man catches a bird. He has the 
bird safe till he goes to put it into the cage, but when 
he opens his hand to put it in, out and off it flies. So 
the riches of men take to themselves wings and fly 
away. 

* 

That prosperity which grows like the mushroom is 
as poisonous as the mushroom. 

\ 
Few men are destroyed, but many destroy them- 
selves. 

* ')- 

* * ;' 

If a man, being a mineralogist, has a finer crystal 
than anybody else, he rather glories in it, and says, 
"You ought to see mine". If a man is a gardener, 



152 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

and has finer roses than anybody else, he glories in 
them. He may go to his neighbor's garden, and 
praise the flowers that he sees there ; but he says, " I 
should like to have you come over and see my roses". 
And he shows them with pride. Nobody shuts his 
own garden-gate when he goes to see his neighbor's 
garden. He carries his own with him. Men glory in 
such outward things ; but how many glory in those 
diamonds, those sapphires — those precious stones 
which all the world recognize as the finest graces of 
the soul? How many men glory because they have 
the true, universal, Christian benevolence of love? 
Who can say, "I am rich — I know that; I am hon- 
ored — I know that; I have a wide sweep of influence, 
authority, power — I know that; but all these things 
are merely external ; I might as well glory in my 
clothes as to glory in them. I thank God, however, 
that I have one occasion for pride, in that I am filled 
with the love that God is filled with. I value myself 
on that account ? " 

No man will stand long in any security in his riches, 
or with any great comfort in his luxuries, who does 
not make his riches serve the wants of common hu- 
manity. Men are not to be heroic, even in the court 
of Mammon, by the magnitude of their riches, but by 
the uses of them. Men are not to be laureled and 
crowned by their profligate expenditure, by their wan- 
ton exhibition of what their wealth will enable them to 
do, by their attempting to gild and garnish and glorify 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 153 

all the lower, all the more sensuous elements in human 
life, because they have the money. Men who are to 
have large properties are coming rapidly under the 
responsibility of using them for the public welfare, and 
not alone for their own selfishness. The man that 
stands to-day upon a pedestal simply because he is 
rich, will in another fifty years stand in the pillory if 
he does not make his riches serve mankind. 






When a man wants more money than he can use, he 
wants too much. 

Let no man glory in his riches unless they are 
riches which are the certificate of God's providence 
that they have been men in the earning of them — 
that their external riches represent internal worth. 



^ 
* * 



The man who gets wealth legitimately is usually 
himself built up in inward riches fully as much as he 
builds up his estate in outward wealth. It is a good 
thing that men have to work long and hard, because 
long and hard work prepares a man for the use and 
for the larger enjoyment of riches, by and by, when he 
has attained it. Men that come to riches suddenly 
are usually either very much injured or entirely de- 
stroyed by it, simply because they have not been 



154 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

trained to use it. They do not know what to do with 
it, and it does what it pleases with them. 






Have a deposit on earth, if you must or can ; but 
let your chief banking be in heaven. Lay up your 
treasure there. That which you pride yourself on, 
which is your main reliance, which is the substance of 
your life and pleasure — let that be heavenly treasure, 
moral quality. 

Geologists sometimes find toads sealed up in rocks. 
They crept in during the formation periods, and de- 
posits closed the orifice through which they entered. 
There they remain, in long darkness and toad stupid- 
ity, till some chance blast or stroke sets them free. 
And there are many rich men sealed up in mountains 
of gold in the same way. If, in the midst of some 
convulsion in the community, one of these mountains 
is overturned, something crawls out into life which is 
called a man ! 

The power of wealth is what it can do for humanity. 
If it can make you happier, if it gives you more ex- 
alted leisure, more knowledge, or opportunities for it; 
if it enables you to bring up your family in a wider 
and better sphere ; if it overflows, and produces in 
your town and neighborhood public benefaction ; if 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 155 

you are the headwaters of the stream, as it were, that 
^vaters the city of God in this world, blessed is your 
wealth, and you, that you are permitted to exercise it 
in such a ^vay. But wealth unused is wealth that is 
dead. Unused wealth is of no more use to a com- 
munity than are the men that lie in mausoleums a 
thousand years old — the dust of the sepulcher. 
Money is like powder. It has no power until it is set 
off. 

We think, we plan, we build, we reach out for 
things, as if it were forever, and as if all that we are 
to enjoy must now speedily be had; and so we fill 
each day striving to heap up its enjoyments, and for- 
getting, as the shadows fall and grow longer, that this 
is not our home; that this is not our true life ; that we 
belong to the beyond, and are on our way thither; 
and that that which is true strength and true riches 
does not lie in outward estate, nor in the thoughts 
of men respecting us, nor in our own thoughts of 
ourselves. 

A man is not to be known by how much money he 
has, but by what money is worth to him. You must 
put your hand into a man's heart to find out how 
much he is worth, not into his pocket. 

* 
A geode is a rude, rough stone that you will find in 



156 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the fields — ragged, coarse and homely; yet, when it is 
selected by the expert eye of the mineralogist, and is 
broken open, its chamber is one mass of beautiful 
crystals, beautiful whether white or amethystine. And 
thus many of the texts in Scripture are geodes ; the 
outward rind, as it were, not being particularly hand- 
some, but the inwardness of them being exquisite. 






The Bible is on the side of the workingmen. It is 
on the side of the slave. It is on the side of men that 
are under hard governments. It is on the side of men 
that are sick and that have failed under the harness of 
life. It is on the side of men whose consciences roar 
out at them like enraged lions ; on the side of sinful, 
suffering humanity; and a book like that is not going 
to be kicked over by ridicule, nor disposed of by 
angry scholarship, nor by the impudent superiority of 
men. It is the people's book; a book of life, that 
carries in its heart the very element of life for the 
human race. 

The Bible is the only book that develops God in 
human conditions, that cheers the end of life, opening 
the doors of immortality; the only book, that, from 
beginning to end, has sympathy with the poor and 
weak and struggling — the sorrowful, the sinful. All 
theories of the nature of the sun may be assailed, but 
the sun shines on and cares naught for them. All 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 157 

theories respecting the history and structure of the 
Bible may be mooted and disputed; but there it is, a 
book whose fruits rise higher, smell sweeter, taste 
more flavorsome, inspire more health, than any or all 
others that have been produced upon the plane of 
human life. 

The Bible is not a book written as John Milton 
wrote "Paradise Lost", nor is it a book written as a 
man writes a history. It is not a book ; it is a series 
of books, with intervals of hundreds of years between. 
It is the record of the progress of the human race in 
their development into the Divine idea through the 
medium of right-living. It is the serial history of the 
construction of the noblest elements that belong to 
human consciousness. 






The Old Testament was a book of time. The New 
is a book of Eternity. The Old Testament taught 
religion for its benefits in this world — the New Testa- 
ment for its benefits in the world to come. It is very 
fitting, therefore, that they should be joined together 
to make one book. The Old Testament attempted to 
bring men into harmony with natural laws. The New 
Testament seeks to harmonize men with spiritual laws. 
The Old Testament, in short, lay within the horizon of 
this world; the New Testament lies beyond the hori- 
zon of time and the world. 



158 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 



What wonder that the Bible is, in its undertones, a 
requiem ? What wonder that every form of sorrow 
and suffering finds a voice somewhere between the 
beginning and the end of the record? And what won- 
der that no philosophy and no infidelity can ever tear 
this book from the hands of men that once have 
received it, because it is in such intimate fellowship 
with that condition which runs through the world of 
weakness and sorrow and suffering which need sympa- 
thy, recognition and consolation ? It is a book for the 
poor, it is a book for the weak, it is a book for all 
sufferers ; for while it recognizes their suffering it 
holds over all the radiant promise of God's sympathy, 
and God's succor, and the hope of that immortality 
which will make everything straight that is crooked 
and everything harmonious that is at discord here. 



* 
# * 



The Bible is first and last simply a book that 
teaches the art and science of right living. That is 
the Bible. It is a chart, a map. The shipmaster 
going out of the port of New York has the whole 
course between here and Liverpool laid down, across 
the depths of the sea. But he does not understand 
hydraulics, nor the elements of water. He does not 
understand the geological questions connected with 
the sand — where it came from. There is a myriad of 
phenomena day and night that belong to the ocean, 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 159 

and with which more or less he is concerned, but what 
he wants is this : " What is the course by which I shall 
steer; what are the currents, where are the sands, and 
where the dangerous rocks." He steers by that chart 
and comes safely to his harbor. 






The New Testament is as full of light as it is of 
consolation. Joy and hope flash through every page 
of it. There never was so unmorbid a book. There 
was never a book that was keyed so high, and that so 
maintained itself through all its parts up to the grand 
culmination of the apocalyptic vision, where you see 
the drama of human life, its conflicts, its wails, its dis- 
asters, its amazing triumphs, its victories, and its dis- 
closures into the other life. 






The Bible is a man-building book. If you want to 
know how to build a good house, you go to an archi- 
tect and get a plan for it. Every stone will then come 
to its place, each to its fellow; the timber will be 
upon the wall, and each beam will be found in its ap- 
pointed place, no matter whether men understand, no 
matter whether the timber is oak or pine or hemlock 
or beech or maple, or anything else. He may not 
understand vegetable physiology, but there is the plan, 
and the house will be completed if the plan has been 
skillfully drawn. 



i6o THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

The word of God is a well-drawn plan for human 
life. Let a man, without attempting to probe the 
heavens or make the circuit and swing of the eterni- 
ties, see what is right for him and what is wrong for 
him. Let him build him a character upon this plan of 
the great Architect, and no man will fail. 






A man does not have music in his house because he 
has all Beethoven's symphonies there in a book shut 
up. Men think they have a good deal of gospel 
because they have a good many Bibles; but a dead 
Bible and a dead music book are just alike. While 
the score has every information for the performer, it 
has no intrinsic value — it is not music. Merely put 
to the harp, or to the organ, a hand that knows where 
the music is, and how to bring it out, and the music 
comes. 

God does not live in a book. Man does not live in 
a book. Love, Faith, Joy, Hope do not, cannot live 
in a book. For the living truth we must go outside of 
the Bible, which is but to religion what a Botany is to 
gardens, meadows, and all their flowers! I feel as if 
some sort of positive relationship existed between me 
and every living thing. A spice bush, a clump of 
wild azaleas, a bed of trailing arbutus, a patch of eye- 
brights, a log covered with green moss — these all 
seem to be of my family kin. The spiders, too, the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. i6i 

crickets, the field-mice, and all the swarms of birds; 
the worm — that as a child I was taught to abhor — 
are of God's family and mine. Since I accepted the 
New Testament, all the world has become my Bible. 
My Saviour is everywhere — in the book, and out of 
the book. I see him in Nature, in human life, in my 
own experience as well as in the recorded fragments 
of His own history. I live in a Bible. But it is an 
unbound book! It is wider than that I can reach its 
bounds. It is enough for me that I believe when it is 
said, "All things were made by Him, and without 
Him was not anything made that was made ". 



# 



Many passages of the Scripture are like wayside 
flowers ; though transcendently beautiful in them- 
selves, they remain unnoticed, because all our life long 
we have been accustomed to see without examining 
them closely. Or they are like the treasures of art 
upon the walls of some old convent; overlaid with 
mould, and dust, and grime, they have been before 
our eyes all our days without being recognized in their 
resplendent excellence. 

The Bible gives the only grand ideal of manhood 
known to literature. Great qualities have been praised 
by pagans, but there has never been in any literature 
that I know of anything more than dashes at the 
truth. From the remotest and darkest periods, there 



i62 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

has come to us through the Bible the truth that Love is 
the organizing center of human character, the only qual- 
ity to which all other elements of the mind will submit; 
the natural, organic force, which develops order and 
harmony. It is more than a descant on the beauty 
and sweetness of personal affection. The Bible re- 
veals Love as the Universal Law of Humanity. Nor 
has this been without its commentary, in the fact that 
within the last two thousand years men have been 
growing up into the stature and spirit of Jesus Christ, 
approximately realizing this otherwise ideal conception 
of what man may become. 



* 
* ^ 



It is not a mere ideal — this book. It is a living 
book, shooting out rajs of light and heat into all the 
world. It is clothed at this hour with the associations 
of myriads of hearts who discover in it the secret of 
their own lives. It is the seed-bed of all that is fine, 
all that is sweet, all that is strong, all that is aspiring 
and ennobling in the highest human character and 
conduct. Every morning the sun rolls over fields, 
forests, flowers and fruits, which itself has created. 
The Sun of Righteousness so shines in the Bible. It 
moves among men netted all over with the sweetest 
and tenderest emotions of the human soul, which 
itself has created as the revelation and voice of God. 
He who knows only the print and the type of the 
book, knows only a painted sun. What the Bible is, 
can be remotely appreciated only by those who can 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 163 

perceive what are its fruits. Like a cloud in summer, 
every drop brings forth a flower. 



* 

*■ * 



The Bible is inspired of God. We are to bear in 
mind that his inspiration — the in-breathing of His 
power, of His thought, of His will — is the cause of 
everything in the universe. The Bible, as I look upon 
it, is the record in part of what the influence of God's 
Spirit moving on human consciousness has brought to 
pass along the course of one national history. It is 
the record in a particular line, of the effect of that 
universal and continuous action of the Divine mind on 
the human mind, that has raised man from the lowest 
barbaric depths, step by step, unfolding moralities, 
social life, all graces, all affections, all reason, all the 
treasures of moral nature, and all spiritualities. It is 
the human race that has been inspired ; and the Bible 
in every part of it was lived first, and the record of it 
made afterward. As a great poet never originates, but 
only throws into masterful forms the sum of all the 
thoughts and feelings that exist down to his time; 
as Shakespeare did not create his characters, but saw 
them, and with genius had the power to gather them 
together in groups and unfold them, not as anything 
that was new, but as that which was existing, though 
incoherent, dispersed, inorganic; so, the race itself 
was inspired to growth, and lived until some results of 
experience had become widespread and vaguely recog- 
nized. The time came when a man of large nature, 



1 64 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

feeling more sensitively the impulse of the Divine 
inspiration, was able to gather, to fix, and give out as 
a truth these unorganized elements — never, perhaps, 
before put into regular form, and spoken. They were 
found out to be real and authoritative before he 
declared it. Many good things in civil laws are, com- 
paratively speaking, laws by public sentiment before 
they become authoritative laws by legislative enact- 
ment. So there are myriads of truths that are unfold- 
ed in action and in fact, long before authority is given 
them by anybody that declares them, crying, "Thus 
saith the Lord ! " God does say so ; but he says so 
first through the findings-out, through the trials, the 
failures and mistakes, the successes and ascertain- 
ments, of actual human experience. And so the Word 
of God is the record along one line of a grand experi- 
ment, namely, the high development of men from the 
lowest point of possible human existence through the 
experience of human life. 






No wheat can grow without the straw, but when the 
straw has brought it forth, both straw and stubble 
perish. The wheat does not; it contains the germ of 
life within itself. And there are a thousand things 
which were employed of God's providence in the de- 
velopment of the truths of His word, which things are 
not to be held on to. They at length become the 
bark, and even moss on the bark, and not anything 
that is helpful. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 165 






While evolution is certain to oblige theology to re- 
construct its system, it will take nothing away from 
the grounds of true religion. It will strip off Saul's 
unmanageable armor from David, to give him greater 
power over the giant. Simple religion is the unfolding 
of the best nature of man toward God, and man has 
been hindered and embittered by the outrageous com- 
plexity of unbearable systems of theology that have 
existed. If you can change theology, you will emanci- 
pate religion; yet men continually confound the two 
terms — religion and theology. They are not alike. 
Religion is the condition of a man's nature as toward 
God and toward his fellowmen. That is religion — 
love that breeds truth, love that breeds justice, love 
that breeds harmonies of intimacy and intercommuni- 
cation, love that breeds duty, love that breeds con- 
science, love that carries in its hand the scepter of 
pain, not to destroy and to torment, but to teach and 
to save. Religion is that state of mind in which a 
man is related by his emotions, and through his emo- 
tions by his will and conduct, to God and to the proper 
performance of duty in this world. Theology is the 
philosophy of God, of divine government, and of hu- 
man nature. The philosophy of these may be one 
thing; the reality of them may be another and totally 
different one. Though intimately connected, they are 
not all the same. Theology is a science ; religion, an 
art. 



i66 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 



* 
* * 



Science does Tiot destroy the doctrine of human sin- 
fulness; it explains it, it defines it, it throws a clearer 
light upon it. The old doctrine of sin, which it seems 
to me no man of moral feeling could allow himself 
to stand on for an hour or a moment, was that the 
human race born of their progenitors fell with them, 
and that the curse of God rested upon the whole 
human posterity, and that therefore all men by reason 
of their connection with Adam, are born without orig- 
inal righteousness, without true holiness and without 
communion with God. They were born without right- 
eousness and holiness and communion with God, and 
they were born without everything else, too; they were 
born with feet that could not walk, and with hands 
that could not handle, and with eyes that could not 
see, and with ears that could not hear ; they were born 
without arithmetic, without grammar ; they were born 
without anything but potential power, with the capac- 
ity to come to these things by the process of unfold- 
ing, and when men say the Avhole human family is 
born without righteousness, of course it is; that is a 
thing that belongs to development and to conscious 
volition later on. Now what is sin? How would it 
be defined from the standpoint of sense if you accept 
the doctrine of Evolution, that if man was not actually 
developed from the animal, he was so near to him 
that he was substantially an animal in his savage 
state? But admit for the moment that man was pri- 
marily an animal, born and developed from his conge- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 167 

ners into a higher state; that there was superinduced 
upon him a moral element, a spiritual element, a 
rational element. The animal man was first in order^ 
and too often in strength, in the primitive day, in the 
early day of every man. And sin lies in the conflict 
between the upper and the under man. If you want 
to see the doctrine stated in its most cogent form, 
read the seventh chapter of Romans, where the con- 
flict is not between a man before he is converted, and 
after he is converted, but between the man animal 
and the man moral and spiritual ; where he thinks the 
highest things, and would fain do the highest things, 
but is pulled down and dragged under perpetually 
by the forces of his animal body. Sin is the remain- 
der, as it were, of the conflict between man moral and 
spiritual and man animal and so far degraded. And 
this gives not simply a rational explanation that every 
man's reason can perceive ; but it takes away the idea 
from the administration of God that men were cursed 
in their birth without any fault of their own, and that 
they were being punished throughout all ages in this 
world on account of a sin that they never committed. 
They have had no part or lot in their great-forefather's 
temptation and fall, but they have had to have their 
dividend in that everlasting, increasing and ever-roll- 
ing damnation that came to them in consequence of it. 



* 
* * 



Sounds are very impressive, but silence is far more 
so; and to me no silence is like that of universal sun- 



1 68 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

light. Out of its stillness come all the energies which 

awaken life upon the globe. It is father of the forest 

*and the field. It creates the currents of the ocean 

and the storms of the air, and yet the sunlight itself is 

forever tranquil. It is to me the most impressive 

feature of the world. It is that symbol which most 

nearly represents the universality of God, the energy 

and fruitfulness of Divine power and its modesty, as 

well. 

* 

None in life sing so sweetly as they who, like the 
wood-thrush, sit on the twilight edge of solitude and 
sing to men who pass by in the sunlight outside. 



* 
# * 



It is solitude that gives zest to society, and goodly 
company it is that prepares you for the joys of soli- 
tude. Alone-ness is to social life what rests are in 
music. Sounds following silence are always sweetest. 



* 



How full the universe is ! And yet it does not 
make any noise. It is a universe of silence. Silence 
is God's chamber hinted at even in Nature. Nothing 
is stiller than the collection of those moist drops that 
are preparing the way for a storm. Though it comes 
beUowing down from the recesses of the heavens, all 
its energy was gathered in perfect silence. That which 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 169 

is going on to make the summer fruitful goes on in 
silence. A million roots are pumping, and no man 
hears the pumping. A million roots are exuding 
forms, but there is no sound of the hammer or of the 
chisel. All is silence. The great work of the phys- 
ical creation is steadily unfolding in silence. How 
full is the heaven around us, above us, and beyond us! 
But to our hearing there are no voices, there is no 
sound, there is only silence. It is not less populus, 
nor less active ; but more so. 






There ought to be but one key to a man's privacy, 
and that is in his own hands ; but the devil has given 
everybody a key to it, and everybody goes in and out 
and filches whatever he pleases. 






I know that there remaineth a rest for the people of 
God. Storms drive us toward it. The thunder and 
crash of earthly discordance are, after all, but the 
background on which there shall be the sweet melo- 
dies of the heavenly life. 






Oh ! let us not be forever on the storm-washed 
shore. Let us not be forever swept and rocked by the 
winds. May we at last find that land where there are 



170 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

no storms ; where is settled peace ; from which we be- 
hold the battlement afar off, where are wafted snatches 
of that blessed song which we, too, ere long, shall sing. 
And we pray that we may gird up our loins, make a 
new crown of faith, and again press upward and for- 
ward, undiscouraged, undismayed, not daunted by suf- 
fering, nor by sorrow, nor by any evil that shall come 
upon us. Holding all our life subject to Thy will, may 
we take or part with whatever is best. May we bear 
our burdens, or find them rolling off, as pleases Thee; 
so that in all things our will and Thine shall be one 
and inseparable. 

Do you know what emphasis there is in the words — 
When we shall see Him as He is 1 The things that are 
past will grow dim and die away. They will be taper- 
lights, at most. But the glory, the majesty, the mag- 
nitude, the bounty, the sweetness, the transcendent 
riches of the Divine Heart, will fill every soul that 
beholds God as He is. Silence will first reign and 
then rapture will break forth from each heart, and 
heaven will resound with shouts of the redeemed. No 
man can learn here what it will be to feel the full 
power of the goodness and love and mercy of the heart 
of God that has cleansed his. But we are all travel- 
ing toward that great tropical Center. 






This world is the workshop of heaven. There we 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 171 

shall see the consummation of that which we see but 
feebly and understand but partially. The law of suf- 
fering runs on beyond, I believe, in multitudes of 
cases, although the final consummation is perfect and 
increscent joy and happiness. Many there are on 
earth who see no outcome ; they are underfoot, they 
are out of place ; suffering seems not only to bring to 
them no relief and no inspiration, and no help and no 
hope, but it seems never to have declared its real 
nature to their surroundings or to their generations. 
Oh ! there will be a land where these things will be 
known ; there will be an interpretation to every pang 
and to every tear and to every crushing sorrow; and 
as for those who suffer for a noble cause, who suffer 
for children, who suffer for those who have no parents, 
who suffer for the community, though they are ac- 
counted unworthy, and are cast out by the community, 
though they be crushed out of life and hope, and go 
mourning all the days of their lives, there is a reckon- 
ing — that is to say, there is to be an unfolding of the 
reasons of their suffering, and the results of it, which 
do not by any means all appear upon this mortal 
sphere and in this limited life — it is to be made 

known. 

* 

Here all things do change. Our honors blossom 
and fade; and riches make to themselves wings and 
fly away. Our affections we invest in dying men; 
and the grave is the house for all human creatures. 
Thither we bear our children and companions and 



172 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

laborers that have worked together with us in the vine- 
yard; and everything runs to ceaseless change in this 
life, so brief, so full of vanity. But there is a rest that 
doth not change. It remains. It waits. None can 
dispossess us of it. No bankruptcy shall enter into 
our estate to reach us there. Nothing shall disturb 
us in that peaceful abode. Though the storm may 
blow, we have a refuge. Though the sea may cast up 
mire and dirt, we have a faith that shall enter within 
the veil — a sure anchor, steadfast and abiding. The 
hereafter comforts the hitherward. 



* 



Teach us the grand life of love ; prepare us to go up, 
but let us not go till we can speak its language ; pre- 
pare us to go up hearing afar off the chant, the 
anthem of love. With feeble murmuring voice we 
call to Thee, "We are coming". We hear Thee 
shout from the battlements, " Come, come, come all, 
and take of the water and live freely". Parched and 
thirsty, and scarcely articulating, we say, " Lord, we are 
coming". Our children come and meet us, our vener- 
able parents are there, the gates are flung open, the 
great procession pours forth; we have an exceeding 
abundant entrance ministered unto us as we come to 
the kingdom of love, and when we shall enter in and 
behold Thee, for the moment we shall forget all other 
things to cast ourselves down in Thy presence, to love 
Thee and adore Thee, and as the sun gives all the 
beauty that there is in flower and tree, or earth or 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 173 

sky, so it shall be Thyself that shall give the love, 
the fatherhood, the motherhood, the brotherhood, the 
childhood — everything, more beautiful because it will 
shine in the radiance of Thy love. 






Make this life as the very verge of the great life 
beyond; and though in the stillest hour we can hear 
nothing, O, grant that by faith we may see and hear 
much. As men that live far away from the sea hear 
the roar of the waves upon the shore, so may we hear 
the praise that beats upon the shores of the other life, 
where Thou hast gathered multitudes that no man can 
number; where their joy mounts higher than our sum- 
mer ; where everything blooms and everything rejoices. 
As we hear it, may we rejoice that we are drawing 
nearer to it, and be ashamed that our voices are so 
poorly constituted to join in that praise with which 
Thou art surrounded. 

Teach us all to be patient while we are bearing 
burdens And as we find our limitations, as one by 
one the signs of the coming departure are made known 
to us, grant that we may rejoice to see the tokens of 
the coming of the Son of man. As they that have 
dwelt long in the wilderness at last rejoicingly begin 
to take down the tent, and prepare to go home, so 
may we be homesick for heaven. And when one and 
another of the things that belong to life, when one and 



174 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 

another of the parts of this tabernacle are being taken 
down, grant that we may turn with unspeakable joy, 
and see the light increasing, the morning coming, the 
victory rending the sky. And so may we live that at 
last death itself shall be the consummation of triumph. 
May we go to glory, and from glory to glory, until we 
stand in Zion and before God. 



* 



If he that gives a cup of cold water to a little child 
in the name of Christ shall not fail of his reward, how 
much less he that opens springs in the desert, that 
strikes the rocks in the mountains so that they gush 
forth, that digs wells from which men through genera- 
tions can drink. Do the little that you can ; do more 
if you can ; and when at last you return with joy upon 
your head to enter in at the gate, there shall throng 
forth from it so many that you cannot count them, of 
those who were refreshed in the hours of sorrow and 
weariness of the way by your labor, and they shall 
come with rosy hand and joyful lip to greet you and 
to bring you before the throne of the Saviour. And 
when once you shall have beheld that loving, adorable 
face, though you have suffered on the cross, though 
you had wilted in the dungeon, though you had been 
broken on the rack, though you had reached Him 
through the fires of martyrdom — one look will be 
more, a thousand times more, than all the suffering. 
And to hear Him say, "Well done" — not all the music 
that time has known, not all the coronets that power 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, 175 

has worn, not all the treasures of the earth, nor all the 
bounties Df the summer with all its sun, can compare 
for one single moment with the rapture that will thrill 
through the heart of one who is saved — safe, wel- 
comed, forever and ever accepted. 



* 



Life is but the beginning of things, and has not 
been so far unfolded as yet that we can see from the 
things in us and around us what sorrow does, nor 
what repentance does, nor what stumbling does, nor 
what oppressions and wrongs do. There is to be a 
time of disclosure, when the end shall have come, and 
the experiment of unnumbered centuries shall have 
been wrought out, and we shall all have gone from 
hence, and become airy spectators of the closing work 
in the other life. God knows that then the whole 
interior history of man and providence and experience 
will declare, "God is good, and the end crowns the 
beginning and the whole work". 



* 

; # 



I cast into the ground the seed of the magnolia; the 
plant spreads and sends down its root, going deeper 
and deeper, the root ministering to the gradually ris- 
ing stem. But when it has grown to be a great tree, 
and spreads its broad, green leaves to the air, and is 
covered with its magnificent vases full of perfume, the 
topmost bloom will never forget for one single instant 



i:6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

that humble root which, plunged down out of sight, 
is giving all its nourishment. Cut the connection 
between the top and the root, the top perishes, and the 
root likewise. The world is as a great tree in which 
the leaves that wave nearest to the heavens and drink 
in the sunshine, are after all the servants of the lowest 
roots that penetrate the earth. The hidden and the 
revealed are one ; the power that the sun gives to the 
leaves goes down through the descending sap, and 
ministers to the utmost part of the roots, just as the 
roots, spread out, bring up also their offerings to min- 
ister to the top. So it is to be among men. We are 
but just learning it. The struggles go on in society, 
in its organizations of government, in its industries, all 
working in the same direction, all working toward the 
common welfare of men ; impeded, checked, thrown 
back, but reasserting themselves, because they are the 
fruit and result of a Divine attraction which is univer- 
sal, and which runs on through the ages in all time to 
the final consummation. 

There be those here that walk in humble ways, for 
whom God's great triumph is prepared. When the 
iron door from life opens, and the golden hinges of 
the gate of the heavenly city are rurned, there shall go 
forth to meet them those who have been blessed by 
them and sent on before — innumerable ranks and 
bands, many of them little children of glorified faces, 
that shall move without feet, and fly without wings; 
for such are not the adjuncts of spirit life. They shall 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 177 

come round about us who have by faith and patience 
achieved victory. We shall behold the great congre- 
gation of the noble gathered and garnered from all 
ages of the world, and from all nations. But we shall 
also behold Him who has redeemed our souls, and 
presided over all the days of our life; and Who, hav- 
ing loved us, loves us to the end. 



* 



What a consummation have we to-day! We stand 
on the ridge looking both ways to the past and the 
future. How many prayers are answered ! How 
many tears, shed in darkness and silence, are made 
radiant now by the rising of the morning of joy. 
What lives have you abandoned ! Upon what a glori- 
ous life you have entered ! Some of you will be 
obscure. He on whose head God has placed His hand 
cannot be other than illustrious. Some of you will 
have much to bear. He that bears the cross of Christ 
can carry the world beside. You may die when you 
please and how you please. He dies into life who 
dies with Christ ministering to him. O, children of 
Christ, newly born ! O, disciples of Christ, newly 
learning ! I bid you Godspeed. If swept about by 
the trials of life — still recall this joyful hour. Stand 
steadfast and faithful. When we pass what has been 
called the river but is now the rill of death, scarcely 
wetting the soles of our feet, we shall stand with the 
ransomed of the Lord and lift up our heads crowned 
with eternal joy. 



178 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






When great structures are to rise, bands of workmen 
are deep down in the soil, digging; or with hammer 
and trowel working as the pile goes up, and at last is 
enclosed and completed. The men are paid and dis- 
missed, but they will never forget as they go past it 
that they have worked on that building, although 
those who see the building will not know it. But when 
the temple of time shall have been completed, there 
is no man that ever carried shovel or hod, no man 
that ever worked at the foundation, or any part of the 
superstructure, that will be left out. Everybody that 
has sought righteousness and humanity and love will 
wear the decorations that Christ will give forth. In 
that millennium of love, in that grand judgment expo- 
sition of love — when you take the perspective of time, 
and look back, and see all cleared away, that long and 
weary course which to us now looks as tumultuous as a 
heap of stones, or as barren as a wilderness — we shall 
understand all. It will be the last grand interpreting 
sight as we look back and see the regular unfolding, 
stage by stage, long protracted because God is long- 
living, not measuring it by the term of human life, 
which is mis-measurem.ent, but measuring it by the 
scale of Him that dwelleth in eternity and has time 
enough for the unfolding of thousands of years and 
ages. When we shall look back from that consumma- 
tion, I think every doubt and strife and groan that we 
had on earth will be remembered only as children 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 179 

grown up remember the little troubles and trials of 
their early*years. 

I think there are hours when a man sees the solu- 
tion of all the vexatious problems of life, being raised 
to a higher standpoint by a spiritual philosophy which 
is never enunciated in language, but is enunciated in 
experience. Sometimes it is only in the hour of death 
that the enunciation is made so that men look back 
upon their past life and business, and forward upon 
the life to come, and see what the things for which 
they have prayed, but which have been delayed or 
have been withheld wholly, have been working out in 
them and for them, by the sovereign grace of God. 



* 
# # 



If you believe in God, do not fret and worry. God 
is going to take care of the universe. I know there 
are multitudes of men who think they are sent into 
the world as God's vicegerents. They tell God in 
their prayers a good many things He never knew 
before, and He smiles at their advice in many other 
relations. But one thought ought to steady every 
man's heart. It is that God is perfectly wise and per- 
fectly good, and is unfolding this earth individually 
and collectively in the ages. Let us accept God and 
rest in Him, Let us not worry nor fret ourselves at 
what men do, nor churches, nor nations, nor any other 
thing, but "trust in the Lord and do good ". 



i8o THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Do the things you can, and do them cheerfully. 
Sing while you work. It is as cheap to trust as to 
fret. 






If you do not know where the next loaf is to come 
from, what will you do.'* Going to be anxious, are 
you? What good will that do? Is Anxious a baker, 
that he will bring you bread? 



# * 



Much of the anxiety of business is mere mosquito 
hunting. Everybody has his own mosquitos that fly 
by night or bite by day. There are few men of nerve 
firm enough to calmly let them bite. Most men insist 
upon flagellating themselves for the sake of not hitting 
their troubles. 



* 
* * 



The eagle sits upon the topmost crag, and the fowler 
far below draws vain arrows at him. There is not 
power in the bow to send the shaft so high as where 
he sits securely. And he who has made God his trust 
need fear neither bullet nor arrow, for no man can 
reach to touch him with harm there. In that hope 
ought we to live ; we are the sons of God. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, i8i 






Fretting and anxious worrying not only do not pro- 
mote prosperity, but they absolutely hinder it. What 
is the use of care and worry? Just so far as they are 
necessary to stimulate activity, they are beneficial; 
but the moment they go beyond that they are actual 
hindrances. I suppose that more than one-half of all 
the suffering of humanity is suffering on account of 
things that never happen. I think if you will look 
back and go over your life, and winnow it, when you 
take out all the fret and worry that really made you 
unhappy, and deprived you of bright, gleaming joy, 
you will find that it was the things which never hap- 
pened that you worried about. I think you would 
find, on the other hand, that half of the good things 
that have really befallen you were things that you 
never dreamed of. It was the unexpected that came 
without your anxiety ; and the things which you were 
fretting and worrying and twisting about incessantly, 
and which you allowed to take away your peace of 
mind, and oftentimes to take away your nerve, and 
unfit you for the battle of life, were things that did 
not come near you. You never learned from one day 
to another in that matter. You fretted on Monday 
just as you did on Sunday, and on Tuesday just as 
you did on Monday, and on Wednesday just as you 
did on Tuesday, and so on, year after year. You 
never learn anything about that. A man who attempt- 
ed to mend a kettle would learn in an hour that every 
time he put a hot iron to it he made a bigger hole 



i82 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

than he mended, and after a few trials he would give 
that up. But men go on making the same mistakes in 
the whole conduct and economy of their life-work. 



* 



It is a bad thing for a man to think too much about 
himself, to talk too much about himself, or to examine 
himself too much. The less he indulges in these 
things the better off he is. Let a man have a sense 
of duty, and take a right direction in life, and then 
sweep and lunge toward things outward as much as 
possible. 

Do not make your sins like an Egyptian mummy, 
with its dried bones and muscles wrapped up in 
gummed hideousness. Let your past sins be buried, 
and if you want to go to the graveyard once in a while 
to see where you have laid them, go, but don't bring 
anything home with you. 






There are many persons who live largely in rehash- 
ing their sins and their sense of guilt. 

When a man has repented of his sins, that is 
enough. Kick them out; do not keep them like so 
many mummies or corpses in the house. 

When you have done wrong and found it out, and 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 183 

have changed to right, and have rectified all the ways 
in which your wrong doing has affected anybody else, 
that is the end ; the sum is complete ; you have no 
business to come back and sit down on your old 
grave-stones. 

Paul said, "I count myself not to have appre- 
hended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those 
things which are behind, and reaching forth unto 
those things which are before, I press toward the 
mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." Paul persecuted; did he ever sit down and 
mourn over it? He spoke of it with tender self- 
reproach; but he had too much to do with the future 
to be groaning over the past; too much to do with the 
rebuilding to be criticising the old structure and delay- 
ing himself. " I have not become perfect, I have not 
reached my ideal, but I forget all the past, " that is to 
say, "I do not stop to talk about my guilt, my wicked- 
ness, my unbelief, and all that sort of thing ; I just let 
that go; it is past; but for the future my life lies 
there; I see what I mean to be, and I press toward 
it." Paul's life was in the future ; he lived by hope as 
well as by faith and love. 






Remorse is the disease of repentance; repentance 
is not remorse, and cannot be; and no remorse is 
healthy that lasts long and becomes chronic. 



1 84 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






A great mother is one of God's windlasses around 
which is twined a silver thread ; the child may go out 
and out; but, first or last, there will be a returning, 
and there will be a winding up, and he will come back 
a2:ain. 



* 
* * 



The unwritten poetry of a mother's heart would give 
to the world a literature beyond all printed words. 






There is in every royal nature a holy of holies; a 
shrine within the shrine ; a place of silence ; the very 
place of germs, where thought, emotion, and being 
itself, begin. Into that comes not the most intimate. 
If any one has seen it, if any foot has trod it, we have 
banished ourselves and cannot return. There we 
meet God. There we meet ourselves. There we hide 
from love itself. But there a mother may come! 
And the soul is yet its own, though mother and God 
have looked upon its secret. 






There is no miracle in conversion. It puts a man 
at school. 



* 
* * 



Some have an idea that a man may be a wicked 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, 185 

man up to a precise moment, and then, when the 
clock strikes twelve, a flash comes out, and he is con- 
verted, and he is all made over — no, no, no, no! I 
may say with perfect confidence that when the birds 
come from the South in early April, summer is com- 
ing — the precursors are here; the air is balmy; now 
then for the garden ; now then for the farm ; now 
then, go to work, husbandman ; gardener, go to work. 
But the summer has not come. But the grass is 
springing, the flowers are peeping out — yes, bright 
heralds of the coming day. Seeds are coming up; 
ti;uly all is right. But no man ever saw in the middle 
of March, rounded out and leaping forth, a whole sum- 
mer with its grandeur and all its fruits. They come 
little by little. Religion may but have a beginning at 
any hour or under any condition. It is by a begin- 
ning ; it is the start ; for a true religion is one begin- 
ning as a grain of mustard-seed, the smallest of all 
seeds, yet grows and spreads itself. And to the dying 
day the man is not yet truly and perfectly religious; 
there is more to come out — so much more that the 
world is not fit for him any longer, and God takes him 
into a higher climate and into a nobler garden. It is 
putting on the harness, then; it is, in other words, 
developing in each man an educated and new life; 
subduing the primary tendencies of human nature 
and obliging them to conform to higher and nobler 
purposes. 

The moment a man really wants to be a Christian, 



1 86 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

he is one. The moment a man really wants to love 
me, he does love me. To be sure, where it is a 
thing that requires time and space and functional cere- 
mony, the wishing for it is not having it; but where it 
is a thing that turns on the nature of the mind itself, 
wishing is having. The moment a man really wants 
to have knowledge, that moment he begins to have it. 
The want is the first step of knowledge. 



* 
* * 



God can convert a man in any way He pleases ; 
and who are you, O theologian, that says He must 
convert him in just that way ? I think that God con- 
verts a man that is slow and stolid, and has no imag- 
ination, in a way that is suited to that fact of human 
construction, and that He converts a man that is a 
poet in a way that is exactly adapted to that peculiar 
material He has got to work on. God does not con- 
vert paving-stones into roses, but He does convert 
roses from roots into bushes, and branches into roses. 
He works on men as He works on Nature. There are 
certain laws by which He works in Nature. Cause 
and effect are constant everywhere, and He works 
upon that greater Nature, the top of Nature, the sum 
and substance of Nature, human life and human expe- 
rience, not in its basic forms, but experimental forms, 
according to His own will — that is to say, He adapts 
Himself to the facts that are in the man, brings him 
out along the way of experience that the man needs 
himself. And we take no glory from God. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, 187 






When you come to the gate of heaven, you may be 
sure, if you knock and say, " Lord, Lord, open unto 
me ", that you will not get in. A man that is fit to go 
in, always goes up without dreaming that God will not 
let him in. He expects to find the gate open. 



* 
* * 



There are a great many people that have had what 
is called a hope and lost it, or what is worse, kept 
it and dried it. 



* 



Conversion is to a man's soul just what ripening is 
to grapes. They hang in the right form ; every one of 
them has skin and seeds, but all are sour. But just 
let them hang there long enough in the bright sun- 
shine till it makes them sweet, and they are converted. 
That is exactly what conversion means to man. He 
hangs there, but sour, until he sees what is the power 
of God — the love of God and the spirit of God 
becomes sweetened to him. 






Conversions are like the dawn of morning : they 
come and irradiate the very dewdrops and change 
them to jewels; they wake all birds, they wake all 
hearts and melodies. When a man has entered into 



iS8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the spiritual elements and knows what it means to be 
Christ's man, loving God and loving everybody, he 
begins to feel and wonder if there is anything on 
God's earth that is so ecstatic as love. If it is beauti- 
ful to love a single one by elective affinity, if the love 
by sympathy includes all men, is it lessened? It is 
glorified. 

I tell you what, if it-s the Lord that converts men, 
I guess the} '11 know it, and other folks will be apt to 
know it too ! Men are naturally like bags full of 
weedrseeds. The Lord first shakes 'em empty, and 
then fills 'em up with precious wheat. Now it stands 
to reason that if the Lord is shakin' a man inside out 
he'll know it. 

Conversion is like the kindling in a soul of the light 
of love. No man is illuminated at conversion entirely; 
it is the rising light that shines brighter and brighter 
unto the perfect day. Before every part of the vast 
chamber of the human soul shall receive its light, time 
and suffering and experience must be passed through; 
but the beginning of the life of love — that, and only 
that, is conversion. 

Any body that wants to keep Sunday to the Lord, 
will keep an eye to it all the week. My opinion is, 
that the reason why folks don't like Sunday is, that 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 189 

they don't know what it is to have a day full of real 
peace, up to the brim, from morning to night, and 
sweet as milk. 

There are insects that fly at night, phosphorescing 
light when they have a mind to, flashing and shutting 
up, like Christians that flash on Sunday, and shut up 
all the week, flying through the dust of business ! 






Sunday is the common people's Magna Charta. 






Sunday has been a generic and multiplex force, 
inspiring and directing all others. It is, indeed, the 
Sun's day. 

Almost every cause which has worked benignly 
among us has received its inspiration and impulse 
largely from this One Solitary Day of the week. 



•* 
* * 



Folks use their children as if they were garret pegs, 
to hang old clothes on — first a jacket, then a coat, and 
then another jacket. You have to take them all down 
to find either one. Our children go trudging all their 



I90 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

lives with their load of names, as if they were old Jews 
returning with an assortment of clothes. People use 
their children as registers to preserve the names of 
aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, and so 
inscribe them with the names of the dead, as if tomb- 
stones were not enough. 

We smile at names. We weigh them in the scale ot 
the ear for sweetness or smoothness. We call some, 
we reject others. We laugh at men's odd and awk- 
ward names, and quite justly too, it may be; since 
capricious whims, and vagrant fancies, or mere care- 
lessness, so often select them. But sometimes a name 
is a history. It is like a pictured vase. We see the 
figures without thinking in what furnace those colors 
were fastened, and by what fire the glazing was fused. 
Is there in any history a record of the heart more 
touching and simple than that of old.'* "And it came 
to pass as Rachel's soul was departing, for she died, 
that she called his name Benoni" — Son of my Sorrow. 






No grace that you have to tug and pull at is a grace 
that you yet possess. If a man wants to be humble, 
and thinks about being humble, and tries to be hum- 
ble, and says, " What shall I do to make myself hum- 
ble.^" that is better than nothing, but he is on the low- 
est form in the school. He is an abecedarian. When 
a man has learned to be humble, he is humble sponta- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 191 

neously, and before he knows it. If a man is really 
meek, his meekness must not be on purpose. A man's 
meekness must leap out at once. He must have had 
such practice that it will come without any volition on 
his part. And so of generosity ; so of forgiveness ; so 
of that deep, unfolding love which shall spring up from 
generous impulses, and from forbearance, and from 
goodness, or from the nature of God, which overflows 
heaven, and deluges the universe itself. The feeling 
must be in you so strong, so full, so continuous, that 
it takes care of itself, and gushes out perpetually in 
every di.rection. And you are in this secret, higher 
religious state, just in proportion as you are involun- 
tarily good, in distinction from being purposely and 
voluntarily good. 

As long as a man thinks W'hat he is going to say, 
he cannot be a public speaker. His speaking must 
get ahead of him, and he must go on behind it, and 
find out what he has said, as it were. That is the sen- 
sation he has. A man that is a poet is to be caught by 
inspiration, and carried on. And no man is more sur- 
prised than the man that has done these things to think 
that he has done them. A man that is working in the 
higher range is like a speaking trumpet, that never 
speaks but is spoken through. That is the feeling. 
The artist that stops and looks at his pallet, and says, 
"What shall I put there? — I do not know," has mis- 
taken his vocation. A true artist puts the right thing 
there, and then says, "I w^onder w^hy I did it".? He 
is first led to do it, and then he analyzes and finds 
out the reason. 



192 THE CROWN- OF LIFE. 



# * 



It is no compliment to Divine grace for a man who 
has been forty years in the church to get up and say, 
"I feel as though I was a vile and filthy rag.'' He is 
a vile and filthy rag to say that. 

If God has been dwelling with a man for years, it is 
not for him to get up and speak of himself as having 
never had such a royal schoolmaster in his bosom. 






Every man that begins to be a Christian, begins at 
the alphabetic forms. Day by day he grows in grace, 
and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
Christ; but the grace must needs come first. It is 
action and reaction. All grace interprets Christ, and 
all knowledge of Christ acts back again to develop 
grace in the souls of men. Every Christian is in a 
process of sanctification, and his perfection comes 
hereafter and in heaven. The phenomenon of sancti- 
fication, the gradual progress of sanctification, is the 
application of this great truth which interprets the 
very genius of the whole Scripture — namely, that 
men come to a higher and higher knowledge of God 
through their own experiences. Christ becomes man- 
ifest to them more and more through long trials. 
Men learning patience for themselves, come to admire 
the infinite long-suffering and patience of God. A 
self-denying love — compassion for inferiors and for 
the imperfect — develops a true conception of what is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 193 

that wonderful love of God in Christ Jesus that saves 
a world of sinners. By laying down our lives, or by 
holding them not for our own benefit, but for those 
that need us, we have learned what is the power of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and what is the meaning of His 
covenant of grace, and of His example, and of His 
atonement, and of the elementary form of all that con- 
stitutes what may be called the scheme of redemption. 
They are all of them evolved in the human kind from 
the incipient experiences of God's people. 



* 
* * 



There is nothing so beautiful as Christlikeness car- 
ried out into life by Christian men. There is nothing 
that so penetrates. It is the best cosmetic for homely 
folks. You cannot change their features or anything 
of that kind, but you can change their expression. 
The artist stands before the canvass and paints on 
this side of it; but the true holiness goes on the other 
side, and strikes through the colors of the face, and 
out comes the beauty of expression, the noblest, divin- 
est beauty there is in this world. 






When it is time for you to die, God will give you 
dying grace. It is for you to find out how to live with 
living grace, and not all the time to live as if you were 
just going to die. 



194 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Although there is great blessing in a prayer-meeting, 
no prayer-meeting on earth is such a means of grace 
as a man's own store. 






Use fiction as you would spices in your diet. No 
man takes a quart of cloves, nor exhausts the cruet at 
a single meal. These things are to be used with mod- 
eration to season one's food with, but they are not to 
be used alone ; and so fictions, while they are not to 
be assorted too exclusively, may be used with discre- 
tion to season life with. 






A reading of fiction which throws off care, or a 
reading of fiction which brings knowledge to men's 
minds — as does much of the fiction that is written 
nowadays — such a reading of fiction is beneficial. 
He who reads fiction to rest himself, to refresh him- 
self, to lift himself above the dead level of the vulgar 
real, reads it to his advantage and profit; but he who 
reads it to abide in it, never giving back a better man 
to his every-day household or business' duties, is hurt 
by it. It has decomposed the texture of his mind. 
He is not so good a man as he was before. And a 
man to be benefited by the reading of fiction not only 
must be lifted up by it above the affairs of earth, but 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 195 

must come back to those affairs again with renewed 
strength. It is said that Antaeus renewed his strength 
when he touched the ground; but we renew our 
strength when we rise into the air. We derive our 
strength from the invisible rather than from the 
visible. 

A true Christian is like a well-plumbed house. He 
has but to turn on the light, and it is there always. 
He has but to turn on the faucet, and rivers and wells 
are at his service. An untrained man is like a fam- 
ily in the lower countries, where he has to go to the 
distant spring to bring in every bucket of water that 
he uses for culinary purposes; and what we want is 
not to have to pump up right feeling, at the right time, 
but to have the right feeling, as it were, in the very 
structure of the soul, so that we have it always when 
needed. A man who has no patience but that which 
comes from instant reflection will have very little; but 
a man who has trained his patience so that it acts 
through habit automatically will, perhaps, not have the 
reputation of being patient; but if not, it is because 
the work is so perfect. It is the art of art to conceal 
art. 



* 
* ^ 



Every Christian may and should so live as to have 
all his views of life clear and settled as to right and 
wrong; so as to recognize and obey moral truths as 
readily as the senses do physical truths. All our phy- 



196 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 

sical life is formed of habits, we are accustomed to 
perfect spontaneity of affections ; is it then mysticism 
to say that we may Hve in the higher range of faculties 
on the same point as we do in the lower spontane- 
ously. When the soul is touched by the spirit of God, 
bathed and suffused in the spirit of love, the mind 
harmonized in every part, love casting out not fear 
only, but all impurity, weakness, impediment — this is 
the highest state of Christian living. 



=* 
* # 



No two persons on God's earth have the same thing 
to do in order to be a Christian. 

Where two persons are identical in their religious 
life, I conclude that one or the other of them is mis- 
taken; for every man has his individual character; and 
religion consists in the development of each man 
according as God, in his providence, made him, and 
where a man is developed so he will not be just like 
anybody else. 

Much evil comes from the habit which persons have 
of comparing themselves with one another. Suppose 
a revival should break out in a band of music, and the 
different instruments should undertake to determme 
whether they were right or not by seeing whether they 
were like each other or not. The haut-boy is in great 
distress of mind because it does not sound like the 
bassoon. "If the bassoon is right, then I am wrong," 
it says. The flute is discouraged because it is not like 
the violoncello; and it says, "If that is right, I Ought 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 197 

not to be here". The violin is very much concerned 
because it is not like the French horn. So each 
instrument is discontented because by comparison, it 
has found that it differs from the others. But is not 
each a musical instrument in its own way? Is it not 
the business of each to be musical according to its 
peculiar nature .'' They have all to be brought to some 
concert-pitch, so that their sound shall combine and 
harmonize; but an orchestra is made up of all sorts of 
instruments, some wooden, some stringed, and some 
brass ; and each of them has its own temperament, or 
tone ; and when chorded and played according to 
their kind, they unite in making harmonious music; 
and the richness of this music depends upon the vari- 
ety of instruments which are working in a certain line, 
in a given direction, and in harmony with each other. 
It is variety which makes the power and beauty of 
every orchestra. 

The exaltations of men lie not in their outward con- 
ditions, not in the praises of men, but in the qualities 
of their own nature, in the lines of light and knowl- 
edge by which they live; and he that becomes a 
Christian and lives in the heroic mood of Christianity 
stands highest, is best prepared to meet the buffetings 
of misfortune, can live in cheer and patience and 
hope. 

There is no apology needed for the rose — it is its 



198 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

own apology; the grapes in a vineyard make them- 
selves manifest to every passer-by ; and every man to 
be a Christian after Christ's method should so live 
that when persons look upon him they shall say, " It 
is lovely! It is beautiful!" All acerbity, all over- 
rigidity, all timidity that circumscribes rational labor, 
all unnatural self-denials, everything that makes a 
man appear to the simple-minded other than genial 
and loving, is a contradiction of Christianity. You 
are bound so to carry your religion that when men 
shall see your light shining they shall want to be 
Christians too, and glorify your Father which is in 
heaven. 

Christians are like folks that have brushes and a 
palette, but not much paint. When they undertake to 
establish good and overcome evil, the qualities, the 
pigments, are wanting. A languid, low-toned color of 
goodness never overcomes anything. It must be pos- 
itive, full of blood, radiant as an angel. Then a man 
shall go out with a conception of goodness into the 
community, and wherever he goes he will carry con- 
viction to evil, so far as conviction can be produced at 
all. 

The fruit of the Spirit is that which is underlaid by 
culture, but culture itself is not it. The text is not 
the precious thing, it is the meaning in the text that is 
precious. A farm must have its implements, but it is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 199 

the harvest that is of value, and they are relative. If 
a man can make a good crop with the poorest imple- 
ments he is better off than his neighbor who has ten 
times better instruments but a poorer crop. And if a 
man can make out of heresies a better Christian life 
than another man does out of his orthodoxy, he is 
nearer to God than the orthodox man. 



* 
* * 



It is the poverty of Christian experience that makes 
infidelity; it is the bad lives of Christians that 
make men doubt whether there are any real lives of 
Christians. 



* 



I believe in the apostolicity of the churches, I 
believe in the descent from the Apostles, I believe 
that that man that is the most humble, the most self- 
sacrificing, the lovliest man before God and with the 
deepest love, he is apostolic. There is no descent 
from the Apostles except in the apostolic life. 



* 
* # 



Do not think because you cannot compare with 
some other one that you are not a Christian. God 
never called you to be any one else than yourself. 
Persevere, be equal to the occasion God sends. 



200 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






True Christian living is true Christian teaching. 
Living faith among us is the remedy for infideUty out- 
side of us. 






The Christian is like a ground diamond, that has no 
light in itself, but flashes back from every facet the 
light the sun gives it. 






What is the difference between a just man and a 
good man ? A just man may stand like an icicle; he 
may repel rather than attract; he is fixed in one or 
two elements ; there is no recurring impulse in his 
justice; it does not swell and contract like the tides; 
it does not go out and come roaring back; it lacks 
variety ; it has almost the constancy of fate in it. But 
a good man, a good-natured man, is a man whose mind 
is all the time bubbling over with strong impulses, 
and impulses along the line of fixed habits. For 
such a man there is sympathy, love, co-operation, and 
rejoicing. 



* 
* * 



A man who is a true Christian ought to be the most 
trusted by the folks that know him best. His ser- 
vants ought to believe in him. The companions of 
his leisure ought to believe in him. The folks that 
see him on a journey away from home for months 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 201 

ought to believe in him. The horse that has not a 
record is of no account. He may have it in him, but 
he is of no account. It is not until you put him on 
his speed and time him by the watch, that you can tell 
whether he is good for anything or not. It is when 
men are timed that they break down. It is the man 
who, on the journey and in the distant capital, as Vv^ell 
as at home, on all the days of the week as well as on 
Sunday, has an established luminous Christian char- 
acter, and abides by it — it is that man who goes forth 
as a real teacher of the gospel of Christ. 






The conditions of life are such that, first or last, 
every right living person, every person striving to live 
by a higher standard than that of the community 
around him — those who are seeking to live only by 
this standard, will be brought into a necessity of 
patience, and a patience of faith and not of sight. 
There are a large number of men who come into life 
with an unbalanced interior, with a disproportionate 
allocation of faculties. There are some who have 
mighty passions and a slender reason. There are 
some who have a very strong temper and but little 
restraining power. The inharmoniousness of men's 
interior is such as to be a separate study of itself. 
Men are like an instrument which is at discord with 
its own self, and cannot send forth symphonic music 
with any success. So there are many persons whose 
business, wdiose problem, whose battle in life consists 



202 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

in some sort of readjustment by education of the dis- 
proportionate elements which go to constitute their 
nature. 

There is no misfortune in the world Hke having 
one's ideal lowered. Our ideal of character is the 
rudder by which we steer. 






I think that a man ous^ht so to live bv a standard 
of honor, truth, and manliness, that he can afford 
to sleep with himself without any fear or trouble. I 
wonder that some men can ever keep company with 
themselves. It is bad company. 






The destruction of ideal standards is utterly ruinous 
to our manhood. 

There is that prophetic gift in every soul of any 
elevation by which there hangs over every step a 
vision of something higher, and better, and nobler, 
and sweeter, and purer. Every man who is really and 
fully organized on a noble pattern, has hovering over 
him a vision of angels transcendently more beautiful 
than any embodiment of it. He has conceptions of 
truth infinitely more grand than any exhibitions of 
truth which he sees on earth. Beauty flames in the 
heavens with color brighter than any that can be 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 203 

reproduced in this world. How do they who attempt 
to fulfill the offices of friendship, find every day that 
they sit in judgment upon themselves because they 
have not half way come up to their conception of its 
patience, of its disinterestedness, of its gentleness, of 
its faithfulness. 

The musician is charmed with the song that in his 
imagination he seems to hear angels sing; but when 
he attempts to write it down with his hands he 
curses the blundering rudeness of material things, by 
which he cannot incarnate so spiritual a thing as his 
thought. It is all torn ; it is stripped of its plumage, 
as it were, and reduced to captivity. The true orator 
is a man whose unbroken speech is a thousand times 
better than his utterance. The true artist is not a 
man who can look upon the thing he has colored and 
say, "It transcends what I saw"; but a man who 
says, " Oh ! if you could see what I saw when I first 
tried to make this, you would think this most homely". 

This excelsior of every soul; this sense of some- 
thing finer, and nobler, and truer, and better — so 
long as this lasts there is in every man a nascent 
inspiration which tends to look away from self — 
which certainly does not incline a man to measure 
himself by his fellowmen. It is vulgar for a man to 
be satisfied with himself because he is better than his 
fellowmen. Every man should have something outside 
of himself, and outside of his fellowmen by which to 
measure himself. Every single day should be a day to 
you of royal discontent. 

You never thought as well as you ought to think. 



204 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

You never meant as highly as you ought to mean. 
You never planned as nobly as you ought to plan. 
You never executed as well as you ought to execute. 
Over the production of the scholar, over the canvas of 
the artist, over the task of the landscape gardener, 
over the pruner's knife, there ought to hover, perpetu- 
ally, his blessed ideal, telling him, " Your work is poor 
— it should be better"; so that every day he should 
lift himself higher and higher, with an everlasting pur- 
suit of hope which shall only end in perfection when 
he reaches the land beyond. 



* 
* * 



If all other men were but four feet high, a man five 
feet would be considered a giant. If you put your 
standard low enough, a man can always judge favor- 
ably about himself. 

Live to-day by your standard, and so far as you 
come short, say, "I am sorry; but, Lord, I come to 
Thee" — and take a new start. 



* 



Men without faults are apt to be men without force. 
A round diamond has no brilliancy. The faults of 
great, generous natures are often over-ripe goodness or 
the shadow which their virtues cast. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 205 



* 
* * 



Men are not willing to admit that they are assailable 
and vincible in the point where they are weakest. Yet 
every man must guard the point of weakness in him- 
self. And watchfulness must not be general, or vague, 
or theoretical. Neither must it be the same as this 
man's or that man's, whose weakness is different 
from yours. Your watch must be set over against 
that which is weak in you. Each man's watchful- 
ness should be according to his temperament and 
constitution. 






Every man should know what are the circumstances, 
the times, and the reasons in which he is liable to sin. 
There are a great many who neglect to watch until 
the proper time and seasons for watching have passed 
away. There are many men who are like a ship 
aground. When the tide is out she does not leak — 
of course not; but as soon as the tide comes up and 
surrounds her, she leaks at every seam, and is filled 
with water. And so there are men who, when the tide 
is up, are perfectly whelmed, but who, when the tide 
goes out, are perfectly free. 






Faults are often stepping stones to heinous sins. 



2o6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 



Faults unmatched tend to run together, and so 
become far more potent than they are in detail. 

What on earth is so small as mist-drops ? And 
even when chilled by the cold in the atmosphere, a 
few of them come together, they fall as scattered 
drops of rain upon the ground. They can hardly 
make a leaf wink. And yet, when these drops fall in 
rapid succession, and continuously, and drop finds 
drop, and they run along together, a rill is found. 
And another rill meets that one. And by and by 
there is a stream as big as your wrist. And such 
streams are the fathers of rivers, mighty and irre- 
sistible. And little things, that do not amount to 
much in themselves, if there are enough of them and 
they flow together long enough, constitute irresistible 
forces. 






There is nothing more easily crushed than a small 
spider ; but if you let him alone he breeds other spi- 
ders ; and they will breed still other spiders. Did you 
ever see what a swarm of spiders will spring from one 
^g%^. And yet, all of them, soon after they are 
hatched, not only are predatory, but are weavers. 
Great is the tribe of weavers. Each goes to work to 
make himself a house — and that is well enough for a 
spider, that does not know any better. One of these 
spiders, perhaps, is in my window, and sets about 
making his house there. He does not seem to amount 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 207 

to much ; but he has power that is not to be despised. 
If I were to say that that speck of a spider was an 
antagonist of the sun, and that it would beat the sun 
all hollow, you would laugh me to scorn ; but it is so. 
For presently he has a brood of spiders — five hun- 
dred of them — and they set to work to spin their 
webs, and run them from side to side, from top to bot- 
tom, and from corner to corner; and by and by the 
window is covered all over. And particles of dust, 
flying through the air, settle on it, and fill up the little 
spaces between the threads. And after a while the 
spiders spin other webs and cover over the first ones. 
And the dust settles on these. And in a year, let the 
sun get through that window if he can ! Big as he is, 
and strong as he is, the spider is more than a match 
for him. 

So a multitude of little faults obscure moral sight, 
and dim a man's outlook, and substantially put out his 
eyes, so that he cannot see. Although each one of 
them is very small they are very effective. Beware of 
faults that tend to reproduce themselves continually. 

If anger is up, good nature is down. If you want 
to get anger down, don't try to push it down — that 
won't do, but go to the other end and pry up good 
nature. 

Books are the windows through which the soul 
looks out. 



2o8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
* * 



Books are grindstones and whetstones for a man's 
mind. 

Those are true books which, Hke glasses, serve to 
enlarge that which lies outside and beyond themselves. 

The slowest thing that can be done in this world is 
the building up of moral character. Many persons 
think that there is a lightning-like process by which 
men's characters can be built up by the Holy Ghost. 
They think that when God by His Spirit strikes the 
soul He knocks the old nature out of it; and that then 
the man rises up a new creature in Christ Jesus. If 
you regard this as a mere figure, there is some truth in 
it; but if you literalize it, and test it scientifically, and 
say that God changes man's nature in an instant as by 
a flash of lightning it is not true. It is as far from the 
analogy of nature as it can possibly be. For there is 
no work that is so important, and none that is so high, 
as the creation of manhood in Christ Jesus ; and there 
is no work that takes so much time; there is no work 
that is so slow ; and there is no work in which men 
are tempted to be so impatient. 

The work of soul-unfolding is slow because it is so 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 209 

voluminous ; it is slow because it belongs to so high a 
sphere; it is slow because it requires the operation of 
both human and Divine influences. It is a work 
which cannot be concentrated. 



* 



Men who want harvests must work and wait for 
them. Men recognize this in material things, but they 
think it is different in spiritual things. They say, '' It 
holds good in the realm of matter, but not in the 
moral kingdom of God". My friends, God's moral 
kingdom is the same as His natural kingdom. There 
is no distinction between these two kingdoms except 
that which you make by words. They are parts of 
a grand unit. They are one and the same thing. 
Nature begins in inorganic matter, and rises through 
sentient being to the throne of God itself. It is one 
stupendous whole. The same analogical laws run 
through it from top to bottom. The same great 
Divine processes and methods belong to every part of 
it. And that God, who will not make the wilderness to 
bud and blossom as the rose without industry, will not 
cause flowers and fruits to spring up in the arid soul 
of a man without industry. If, therefore, you are 
attempting to bring up your children by prayer, I tell 
you, you are like a man who goes out to hunt, and 
says, "The great power of hunting lies in the bow", 
and does not carry any arrows with him, and twangs 
at a deer, but does not hurt him; or you are like a 
man who goes out, and says, " The power of hunting 



210 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

lies in the arrow", but does not carry any bow; so 
that when he pulls the arrow over his hand down it 
goes at his feet and does not kill anything. For suc- 
cessful hunting there must be a good bow, and a good 
arrow, and a good man behind them both. If these 
conditions are complied with, you will hit, if there be 
any hit in you. Says the Divine Word, "Work out 
your own salvation with fear and trembling" — there 
is the arrow; "for it is God that w^orketh in you" — 
there is the bow. The two things are necessary. 



4(= 



A man's character is his reality. It is the acting, 
moving force of his being. Reputation is the impres- 
sion which he has made upon other men — it is their 
thought of him. Our character is always ourselves, 
but our reputation is in others. 



* 

^ * 



Men seem to think that the imagination is one of 
the lighter faculties ; that it may be used sportively in 
alliance with sensuous beauty; but the imagination is 
to be used in connection with the reason as well as the 
senses ; and these elements combined give higher ide- 
als than can be attained by the senses alone. The 
whole race goes from the lower to the higher planes of 
life through the imagitiation. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 211 



* 



No man without imagination can by any possibility 
be an acute observer, nor a sound reasoner even 
upon physical facts, still less upon truths that involve 
some mental qualities. 






Words mean whatever they have the power to make 
us think of when we look on them. Flowers mean 
what sentiment they have the power to produce in us. 
The image which a flower casts upon a sensitive plate 
is simply its own self-form ; but, cast upon a more sen- 
sitive human soul, it leaves there not mere form, but 
feeling, excitement, suggestion. God gave it power to 
do that, or it would not have done it. 






Imagination is the very marrow of faith. 



* 



Lord's Supper belongs to every one who desires to 
lead a Christian life, and puts his hope and trust in 
the Lord Jesus Christ, whether he belongs to another 
communion, or whether he belongs to none. If in 
your inmost soul you desire to live Christ-like, and 
wish to avow the Lord as your Saviour, and to follow 
him faithfully, and this is offered to you, you have a 
right to take it. 



212 THE CROWIV OF LIFE. 



* 



To-day we are called on for a renewed expression of 
fealty and fidelity. The taking of this bread and the 
drinking of this wine is emptiness itself, unless we can 
quicken our faith and our thought by some such iden- 
tification with Christ as shall give meaning to these 
materials. Are you broken as a loaf is broken. Is 
your heart wrung as the cluster of grapes is wrung out 
into wine ? Is the very blood, almost, of suffering 
wrung out of you? Christ the Sufferer, Christ the 
Burden-Bearer, Christ — though he first crowned him- 
self least and lowest — is your Master; and are you 
willing to follow Him in the way of suffering, in the 
way of strife, and make proof of what love is, not by 
the joyousness of an inflamed love, but by the power 
of love to bear, to endure, to suffer ? How much that 
love is, is not to be told on the strings of the lute! 
How much that love is, is not to be told on the gales 
of perfumed summer! How much that love is, can 
never be made known by the sweetest descantings of 
poetry and oratory ! How much that love is, tears 
and wounded hands and lacerated hearts tell! Suffer- 
ing is the test of love. Are you, to-day, willing to be 
a disciple of the suffering and self-sacrificing Saviour, 
and to go forth out of the camp to meet and rejoice 
with Him in His disfigurement and in all His sacri- 
fice, and so reign with Him in heaven; and, when He 
shall come with all His father's angels, to be glorified 
in the final victory of the universe ? 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 213 



* 



I cannot bring back my little child, but I can take a- 
locket and look at his face ; and he springs to life in 
my inward thought. There are scenes in my child- 
hood that I cannot tread again, but a very simple 
memorial, a little dried flower, or some little yellow 
faded note, bring back again with a resurrection of 
the memory the sweet sense of an early experience. 
There are sorrows that come again as if they had 
never departed, and so by some such very simple sym- 
bol we can bring again before us the Saviour broken 
for us, his blood shed for us ; and bring into our mind 
the royalty of love suffering for those that it loves, and 
dying to give them life; weakened, dishonored, slain, 
that we might be strengthened, glorified, and everlast- 
ingly saved. 






If you feel your need of God, and have faith that 
He feels a need of you ; if your heart has a throb of 
answering gratitude for the great goodness with which 
He has been kind to you, you have the conditions that 
justify you in partaking of this Lord's Supper. 






Church membership is not the ground for the Lord's 
Supper. The ground is spiritual need. 



214 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Let the affairs of life call you up step by step. Do 
not force your way. Do not commit burglary on 
success. 






If a man will have a golden fish, let him go to the 
side of the stream of life calmly, put in his hook dis- 
creetly, and Jift out his prey with an easy and even 
pull. But if he threshes back with full swing, ten to 
one he will dash his luck to pieces. 






Take the lowest seat, and work your way up. Let 
a man be called up always. Do your work wherever 
you are, and do it faithfully and so contentedly that 
men will want you one step higher and will call you 
up. And when you get there, do your work so thor- 
oughly well and so contentedly that they will want you 
still higher. The more you do your work w^ell the 
more they will want you still higher, and higher, and 
higher. Be drawn up. Do not force yourself up. 
That leads to chicanery, to pretence, to mistakes, and 
even to temptations and crimes. 






There is not one man that is smart where there are 
twenty men that think they are; and many men are 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 215 

smart only as flies are ; they make a world of buzzing, 
but do not make much else. 

* 

It is not what a man finds that does him good but 
what he does. 

First get your fish to bite, then see that you so land 
them that they are good for something. 

# # ■ 

You cannot succeed in life by spasmodic jerks. 
You cannot win confidence nor earn friendship, nor 
gam influence, nor attain skill, nor reach position by 
violent snatches. One sort of men lose by too much 
caution, another kind by too much largeness. One 
waits too long, another does not wait long enough. 

God will not thank you for the parings, the peelings, 
the chaff, the shucks, of your time. If there is an 
hour when your thoughts are clearer and your affec- 
tions are stronger than at any other time, take that 
hour for God. Serve God with your best faculties. 
Serve Him not only with the best times and seasons 
but with the best feelings that you have. We are to 
take care that we keep our most royal hours and our 
most golden moods for His service. 



2i6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






A man that can put into exact words what he feels, 
does not feel much. 



* 
* * 



There is a wisdom of feeling, as well as of thought. 
Calculation is as often wrong as inspiration. The 
intuitions of our moral sentiments seldom mislead us. 
The passions need the rein and curb, but moral senti- 
ments need the spur. 






Come — that is the thing — with a deep experience, 
if you have it ; without a deep experience, if you have 
it not; ,with a great tumult, if you cannot help it; 
without much tumult if it please God that it should be 
so. It is come back to God at any rate. 






Our finer feelings are like the evening primrose, all 
the sunlight but shuts them closer. And yet, when 
evening comes and dews are falling, if you will watch, 
you shall see the twilight with gentle influence unroll 
them one by one, with visible motion, each blossom 
throwing forth, as it opens, its offering of delicate 
color. 






The finest essences of human life are those that 
elude all philosophy and all language. Tell me, is 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 217 

there anything more exquisite than a mother's love for 
her babe? And though she were a poet, lyrical like 
Sappho, though she were like Browning, though she 
were like the rarest spirits that ever lived, what mother 
does not know, when she would put that which is the 
very exquisite royalty of emotion into lauguage, that 
no language was ever made that expressed it. Lan- 
guage can point the way to where the feeling is, and 
give some general conception of it; but the beauty, 
the glory, the voice of the feeling escapes. 

The only use of feeling in repentance is to make a 
man change. That which will make a man change is 
feeling enough, and the old midnight of horror that 
does not change a man is not good for anything. 
Men say it is being sorry for your sins. Yes ; that is 
an element of it ; that is a primary element of it. But 
what is the use of being sorry for your sins if you do 
not quit them? No use at all. Sorrow is not broth 
that gives any digestible quality to a man's sin. The 
only use of feeling bad at all is to remedy something. 
If you feel bad in bone or muscle or nerve, on account 
of dissipation, the feeling bad about it, over and above 
the physical ache, is simply reforming your manners, 
your way of living; that is all it is good for. Pain is 
the incitement to reformation. 

' Feelings are like drops of water. They form rivers 



2i8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

and roll slowly on, with only here and there a sound- 
ing fall, and empty themselves into the eternities. 






You do not need to wait for any systematic belief, 
or for any special change. Take the duty that stands 
next to you, and attempt to do it for God's sake, and 
continue doing it, and the proper discharge of your 
obligations will of itself develop in you a spiritual 
state. The tendency of right-doing is to raise the 
doer into a higher mood. 






If right feelings do not produce right conduct they 
die out ; and if right conduct does not produce right 
feelings it is because you do not let it. Every good 
deed that a man does is like the germ of a plant. 
Give it a chance to grow, and the earth beneath it will 
counsel it to shoot up; and up it will come. Every 
right thing done, if it be not hindered, will be fruitful 
in spiritualizing the mind; and a spiritualized mind 
will occupy itself in doing right things. 



^ 



As promised pleasures bear no proportion in realiza- 
tion to anticipation, so the exigencies we esteem most 
dangerous and painful, bring with them remunerations 
nowhere else to be found. Sometimes when it li^s 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 219 

seemed as if telling the truth were like laying down 
life, we find ourselves suddenly superior to whatever 
man may do or say or think. The loose and floating 
joys which men call pleasure, are not to be compared 
with the triumph of rising above difficulties, when we 
break through the crust of flesh, and sound the depths 
of our immortality; this is a transcendent, a rarer joy 
than aught else can bestow. The reason of this is in 
the philosophy of it. Christian self-denial is the tri- 
umph of a higher feeling over a lower one. When the 
lower powers and passions are completely subjugated, 
and habitually under the control of conscience and 
love, the conscious self-denial ceases. Every Chris- 
tian should doubt himself if self-denial is as hard after 
ten years as at the beginning. Where there is but lit- 
tle drill and training there will be hard fighting, but 
we should deny ourselves until the feeling of self- 
denial ceases. 

Self-denial is that by which we put down the infe- 
rior things for the sake of the ascendency of superior 
things. It runs in music, it runs in the painter's art, 
it runs in sculpture and in architecture, it runs in hus- 
bandry and in statesmanship, it runs everywhere. 
There is not in the world any way by which a man 
comes to himself in the higher realms, except by steps 
of self-denial ; and when Christ says, with larger scope 
and more profound spiritual meaning, " If any man 
would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take 
up his cross and follow Me ", it is a truth as wide as 



220 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the sphere ; but how different in the understanding of 
men from what it was in the pronunciation of our 
Master ! 

A man that is so shallow as to live merely for him- 
self very soon exhausts himself. 






We do not go far enough in our self-denials ; we go 
just so far as to make them taste bitter, and not to 
make them taste good with the heroism and the tri- 
umphs on the other side. 






Is gratifying one's self the end of life? Is that the 
Christian love ? Has any man a right to hold himself 
in his class, and have no intercouse Avith those who 
are beneath him except that of a patron, and a far-off 
patron, sending down kindnesses to them t Is there a 
man that is superior that does not owe himself to 
those who are inferior.'* There is no other gift that is 
so worthy of giving as one's self. God, when He 
would show his love to the world, gave himself ; and 
what are you, that you shall not give yourselves .'' The 
higher you are, the more you owe yourselves to the 
lowest and least; and you owe, not what you take in 
your hand, but what you have in your heart. You owe 
your taste, your sensibility, your accomplishments, 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 221 

your knowledge, your inner man. It is by the medi- 
cine of a living soul that dead souls are brought to 
life. 

A man who does not know how to learn from his 
mistakes turns the best schoolmaster out of his life. 

It is better for a man to make mistakes striving, 
than to make no mistakes supine, dead. Life is able 
to qualify mistakes. 

Even mistakes are providences ; for as the axe is 
made sharp by that which it loses on the grindstone, 
so men are made sharp by that which they lose 
through blunders that fit them for the next encounter. 



* 



Impulse springs up, and, like a spark, dies out; but 
purpose brings brand to brand, feeds the fire and 
keeps its luminosity and heat steadily going. It gives 
unity to action. It does not trust to moods at all, 
knowing that they come and go like tides. It even 
excites impulse, which first excited it; for all will 
grows out of emotions ; and if guided by the intellect, 
interfused by those methods by which the impulses are 
gratified, not only once or twice, but continuously in 



222 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the future, it is the main-spring of industry. It con- 
nects industry with industry. Will power is the pur- 
pose that sees the line of action between things, 
organizes it, and carries it on. Unless there were 
some such determining, connecting element, man's life 
would be like a bushel of marbles, simple impulses in 
juxlaposition, but not an organic unity. 

This world is a great groaning machine which needs 
lubrication and God-sent humor to make its wheels 
run smooth. 

It is a great thing to have a sense of humor. To 
go through life with no sense of the humorous and 
ridiculous, is like being in a wagon without springs. 

I never saw any harm in laughing. If it's a sin I 
can't see what the Lord lets so many funny things 
happen for. I don't go and make things funny! 
They come to me. The whole world is full of queer 
things, and it isn't my fault if I see them. 

The way to lift ia soul up into the arms of God is to 
put another soul under it, and lift it up by its power. 
The true gospel is that of soul on soul in this world. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 223 






Men are not music boxes, which, when wound up, 
carry their own players inside of them ; but they are 
harps, which must be touched from without. Each 
man's heart, therefore, must be touched by other men. 
We are to touch other men's hearts. Other men's 
hearts are belfries, and there we must ring out all our 
chimes. 

* * 

Every man should learn to look upon his business 
as a calling that, while it brings to him support, and it 
may be affluence, and even distinction, in the main is 
a factor of benevolence, and is developing him by 
methods that very largely multiply the happiness, the 
convenience, and the welfare of his fellowmen. 

The real secret and center of the universe is, " God 
is love"; and that love overmasters anarchy of force; 
and that the genius of Divine government in all time, 
as it shall be seen at the close of time, is care for the 
weak. 

All those men who have the spirit of Christ are 
giving themselves forth a ransom for many, not in the 
same sense that He did, but according to the measure 
of their power and of their sphere. We are of Christ 
when we imitate him by giving ourselves for others. 



224 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
* * 



Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy 
neighbor as thyself. And in the proportion in which 
you find in yourself that humanizing and Divine ten- 
dency, care for those that need care, the distribution 
of yourself, your treasures of knowledge, your refine- 
ments of beauty and of civilization, the power of your 
hand, the power of your treasure, the power of your 
heart — in proportion as these go out to men just in 
the ratio of their need, in that proportion you will 
reproduce Christ, in that proportion you will repro- 
duce God in the imagination and in the heart of men. 

The power of the State lies in the bottom of it. 
Take care of that and you take care of the whole. 

■ =* 

If there is any orthodoxy in the world that is valid 
to the judgment-day, and beyond it, it is the ortho- 
doxy of right loving. On these two — love to God 
and love to man — hang all the law and the prophets, 
said the Lord Himself. Love is the end of the law 
for righteousness; love doeth no injury to any one; 
love is the Gospel. 

"Who is my neighbor?" Anybody that knows 
you is your neighbor. Everybody that I meet is my 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 225 

brother. God is a universal father, the human race is 
a universal family, man is brother to man, men are 
kindred the world over ; and no man can really learn 
how to love until he comes into that disposition of the 
soul by • which he has sympathy, longing, yearning, 
good-will, toward every human creature. 



# 
* ^ 



God's kingdom — that is, the ideal mankind, looked 
at in the light and under the influence of Jesus Christ 
— is not divided up by artificial lines, but is an abso- 
lute united brotherhood. From the spiritual plane, 
looking down upon the human race, it is one great 
family; and as God is the Father, the whole race is 
His household; and all the diverse scattered elements 
of the human family are, after all, interiorly grouped 
together in the eye of God and of His providence, as 
one great unity, one vast brotherhood. 



* 



This brotherhood of man does not mean absolute 
equality, nor desert absolutely alike. It is entirely 
consistent with the doctrine of inferiors and supe- 
riors — with the relative superiority which belongs to 
power, and the relative inferiority which belongs to 
want of power. Because some are high, and because 
they are relatively superior, it does not necessarily 
follow that they are separated from those who are infe- 
rior to them by reason of demerit or weakness or sin. 



226 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

The glory of the household is the strength of the 
strong and the weakness of the weak. There is 
nothing in the household so strong as the weakness of 
the cradle. There is nothing in the household so 
reverend as the weakness of the venerable father or 
mother that sits trembling in the chair. To the one 
extreme or the other of weakness, all strength, all vir- 
tue, and all manliness bow. And in the human race 
there should be the enlisting of strength in behalf of 
weakness. The power of knowledge, of refinement, of 
culture, of the arts, etc., in a strong race, are so many- 
overtures of generous bounty, so many means of benef- 
icence, so many filaments of union, by which the weak 
are to be bound to the .strong. The welfare of the 
whole is to be sought by the whole. 



* 

* * 



An absolute brotherhood is quite consistent with 
subordination, with relative position, the high being 
high without detriment to the low, or rather the high 
beings almoners of God's bounty to the low. The 
attempt to level all men to an absolute equality, 
whether of bodily, mental, moral, or political and sec- 
ular conditions, is a madman's attempt. 

If there should be rebellion in the fields, and the 
grass should be jealous of the forests, and should say 
to the pines, and hemlocks, and beeches, and birches, 
and maples, and oaks, and hickories, " Bring down 
those high heads of yours ", it would not make the 
grass grow any higher. Grass is grass, and trees 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 227 

are trees ; and no amount of railing on the part of the 
one will make it equal to the other. No destruction 
of the top is going to lift up the bottom. There is no 
way in which the bottom can go up except as the top 
goes up — by brain-power, in the right spot, at the top 
of the head and not at the bottom. 

The brotherhood of man does not imply any notions 
of equality, either actual or possible. To the end of 
the world there will be gradations. 






Emotion with intellect — emotion as the bow and 
the intellect as the arrow — that is preaching. 



# 



Many and many a river works. The Merrimac runs 
with a small channel. It is called a prodigious river ; 
but I could almost ford it. Where are its waters? 
For a hundred miles they are busy turning vast 
wheels. They have turned out to the right and to the 
left, and gone to work; and that is better than for 
them to be in the middle of a deep channel, and not 
work. So there are great hearts that turn currents of 
emotion into actual practical deeds. 






Many persons think emotion is religion; but it is 
not. A person may have such rapturous views of 



228 THE CROWA^ OF LIFE. - 

God, of heaven and the rest that remaineth for the 
people of God, as to be unfitted for either heaven or 
earth. It is safe and wholesome to have intense feel- 
ings, high excitements, if they take on practical forms ; 
but it is neither safe nor wholesome to have such feel- 
ings and excitements if they do not take on such 
forms. 

The true test in religion is not how impressionable 
one is. I put an vEolian harp in my window. The 
evening breeze having nothing to do, and finding the 
harp in the window, courts it, and an interchange of 
sweet sounds goes on. I take a crow-bar and put that 
in the window. The same wind sweeps over it, but it 
does not sing. Why did the harp sing 1 For no 
reason except that its nature is impressionable. There 
was no merit in what it did. Why did not the crow- 
bar sing ? Because it was made a crow-bar. Some 
men are like crow-bars and some like ^olian harps ; 
but if a man is like an ^olian harp, it is no credit to 
him that he sounds quickly ; and if a man is like a 
crow-bar it is not his fault that he does not sound 
readily. 

* * 

There are some men who are prodigiously joyful in 
religion, but to whom no more merit is due than to 
the trumpet that sounds loudly when a strong man 
blows it. There are other persons who have slow, 
methodical, unexcitable natures ; and, looking at these 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 22g 

excitable people they say, "If I really were a good 
Christian man, there is what I should be; but I can- 
not get up to where they are. I wish I could, God be 
merciful to me a sinner." Now, these unemotive men 
are as true to their nature as are those emotive men, 
and very likely are better ; for although emotive men 
are sensitive to feeling, the unemotive men never use 
their feeling as a cascade to fill the air full of flying 
drops and vapor; they use it rather as a mill-stream 
with which to turn the wheel of purpose and activity. 

Suppose one could say, " It is a good thing to be a 
genius, but I am not one. I should be very glad to be 
a composer like Rossini, or Mozart, or Handel, or 
Haydn, or Beethoven, or Wagner; but I am not. I 
cannot make the air melodious; I cannot send march- 
ing through space grand processions of sounds that 
stir the imagination of men; but I have love and joy; 
and my joy rings out perpetually such music that if it 
is not heard on earth it must be heard on the other 
side. I have constant joy. Men cannot help feeling 
it. I sleep, and hear bells ringing. I wake, and they 
are ringing still. The chimes of God and of the eter- 
nal world are forever in my soul, which is the belfry of 
God." How many men glory in that.'' How many 
men are proud because they have love and joy ? 

If a man is born a crow, let him crow ; but if he is 
born a nightingale, let him sing and not crow. 



230 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






A true Christian man should be the freest, most 
joyous, upright, frank, most lovable. 



* 
* * 



There are joys that mock the senses, there are joys 
that lift up almost within sound of the harpings at 
heaven's gate. 






Joy comes to us as the chestnut comes, the burr full 
of prickles, but in the interior, sweet and most tooth- 
some nuts. 






A man may have joy of one sort and of another 
and of another ; but it is when the whole man is com- 
posed into a harmony in Jesus Christ that he hears 
those sounds of true joy that will not die away. We 
are like an orchestra in our life. Suppose that in an 
orchestra the instruments did not care for each other, 
every one of them striving to take the lead of all the 
rest; suppose the piccolo should undertake to squeal 
away in the altitudes and drown all the others ; or sup- 
pose that the sharp piercing clarionet should feel itself 
to be the whole music that there was in the band; 
suppose the old wheezy bassoon should say, "No, I 
am here also"; and suppose the tenor and the bass 
were at conflict with each other, each seeking to make 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 231 

itself heard and be dominant; what would you think 
of that for music ? It is where they are all attuned to 
each other in common concert pitch, where they all 
harmonize with each other, that we have true music. 
The broad ocean is a unit, and it constantly comes 
back again to unity. 

So it is in character. A superficial joy, a joy of the 
senses, a mere joy that hath in it neither time nor eter- 
nity, but a flash — that is not the ideal of Christian 
joy that I would hold before you ; it is that due sub- 
mission of every part of your nature to harmony in 
yourself as the immediate inspiration of God. 






A true Christian development in man, formed after 
the pattern of Jesus Christ, is full of joy of every kind 
from the lowest to the highest scale ; and as in the 
harp the deepest note of every chord all the way up 
to the shrillest is musical, so in a truly Christian dis- 
position we have the right of joyfulness in all things 
that are becoming manhood and womanhood. 



* 



Gentleness is not a quality of not having vim. 
When a man is strong and energetic, and at the same 
time uses his strength and energy and power with 
sweetness, that is gentleness. See the great swarthy 
smith as he returns from the anvil, every muscle 
herculean after the day's labor, washing himself that 



232 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

he may come back to his own complexion. As the 
Httle child totters out to him, see with what ineffable 
sweetness he gathers up the little one on his shoulder, 
and holds the babe in his arms. He that could swing 
a giant and slay him walks about the servant of the 
little children, so gently that they love him almost 
more than they love the mother's bosom. It is the 
sw^eetness of strength in an element of love that makes 
gentleness. It is not an attribute of weakness ; weak- 
ness is not gentle. 



* 
* ^ 



I believe in softness in the heart; but I do not 
believe in having a man's head soft. 



* 

* i 



There is a great deal of weakness in the world ; but 
that is not gentleness. Soft touches when a man can- 
not touch any other way than softly, are not gentle- 
ness. Gentleness is power, intensity, vigor ; power 
made soft by the sweetness of love is gentleness. 






If you would be happy you must do good for the 
sake of doing good, and not for the sake of the kick- 
ing back of happiness on you. 






Happiness is just as virtuous as moping melan- 
choly, and a good deal more so. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 233 



* 



I believe Christ to have been the happiest man that 
ever dawned above the horizon of time in earthly con- 
dition. Do you suppose that such a being exercising 
the greatest part of a man's nature, his moral nature 
— bearing in mind that it is more blessed to give than 
to receive, by His own testimony — do you believe 
that such a being as He could live in the midst of so 
much want and trouble, to allay the trouble, staunch 
the tears, encourage the doubting, heal the sick — do 
you suppose that He stood and commanded the bier 
which bore the only son of a widow, and raised him to 
life, and gave him back to her, and that He stood like 
an icicle, that He saw it all, and did not feel, did not 
care? Do you not suppose that even her heart itself 
could not have had the same exquisite satisfaction 
that His heart had ? When He went to Jarius to raise 
his daughter, and the sweet maiden came back, and 
the hearts of the father and mother were melted with 
joy and gratitude, do you suppose that He had not 
some sweet thought Who had done all this ? Do you 
suppose that He who raised the dead, gave sight to 
the blind, wholeness to the lame, purity to the leper — 
that in all this world of wonder Christ was not happy? 
I think there was no creature in Palestine so happy as 
He was. 

Let no man tell me that Christ was not a happy 
man. Listen to the royal sentence — "Who for the 
joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the 
shame, and is set down at the right hand of God." 
In sorrow are the sweetest elements of joy. 



234 THE CROWN' OF LIFE. 

He is called "a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief". He had mighty sorrows, He experienced 
great grief; but don't tell me Christ was not a happy 
man. 

The body is like a piano, happiness is like music. 
It is needful to have the instrument in good order. 
But that is but a beginning. Something must play 
upon the instrument. And who performs, and from 
what musical score, will determine the character of the 
concert. Chickering's grandest piano, with a fool play- 
ing jigs on it, is not so good as an old harpsichord 
with Beethoven at the keys. 



* 
# ^ 



If a man has come to that point where he is content, 
he ought to be put in his coffin ; for a contented live 
man is a shame? 

Let every man take that which has been given him 
and be content. God makes sparrows to sing, and 
they sing as sparrows ; he makes bluebirds to sing, and 
they sing as bluebirds ; he makes robins to sing, and 
they sing as robins ; he makes wood-thrushes and 
larks to sing, and they sing in the way that they were 
made to sing. They are all parts of the great choir, 
and each carries his part, and each sings sweeter and 
better in singing according to his own nature, than he 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 235 

would if he undertook to copy the style of some other 
bird singer. 

Be content with whatever state you are in — find the 
right side of it. 






Contentment does not consist in a want of push. 



* 
* * 



Once upon a time a little leaf was heard to sigh 
and cry, as leaves often do when a gentle wind is 
about. And the twig said, "What is the matter, little 
leaf.?" And the leaf said, "The wind just told me 
that one day it would pull me off and throw me down 
to die on the ground!" The twig told it to the 
branch on which it grew, and the branch told it to 
the tree. And when the tree heard it, it rustled all 
over, and sent back word to the leaf, "Do not be 
afraid; hold on tightly, and you shall not go till you 
want to". And so the leaf stopped sighing, but went 
on nestling and singing. Every time the tree shook 
itself and stirred up all its leaves, the branches shook 
themselves, and the little twig shook itself, and the 
little leaf danced up and down merrily, as if nothing 
could ever pull it off. And so it grew all summer 
long till October. And when the bright days of 
autumn came, the little leaf saw all the leaves around 
becoming very beautiful. Some were yellow, and 



236 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

some scarlet, and some striped with both colors. 
Then it asked the tree what it meant? And the tree 
said, "All these leaves are getting ready to flyaway, 
and they have put on these beautiful colors because of 
joy". Then the little leaf began to want to go, and 
grew very beautiful in thinking of it, and when it was 
very gay in color, it saw that the branches of the tree 
had no color in them, and so the leaf said, "O, 
branches ! why are you lead color and we golden ? " 
"We must keep on our work clothes, for our life is not 
done; but your clothes are for holiday, because your 
tasks are over." Just then, a little puff of wind came, 
and the leaf let go without thinking of it, and the wind 
took it up, and turned it over and over, and whirled it 
like a spark of fire in the air and then it fell gently 
down under the edge of the fence among hundreds of 
leaves, and fell into a dream and never waked up to 
tell what it dreamed about. 



* 
^ ^ 



There are a great many doors open, but a door must 
be a man's size, or it is not meant for him. I have 
seen a great many men in for openings that were not 
for them. 

First find out what God has meant you to be — and 
if yoti cannot find it out yourself, your friends can 
very quick — and then enter that department of life 
for which you were intended. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. zyj 



# 



How many men that have been bored for forty- 
pound cannons, have been spoiled in the gun-range! 






No man can do his best work except along the 
line of his strongest faculties. What if a farmer 
should harness greyhounds together and plough with 
them ? What if racing on the track was to be made 
by oxen? An ox is for strength, a greyhound for 
speed; but men are greyhounds where they ought to 
be oxen, and oxen where they ought to be grey- 
hounds, all their lives. How should they know? By 
their blunders mostly. How often most admirable 
men of ideas are mere copyists ! They generate 
thought, they have latent poetry in them, they have 
latent inspirations ; if they had been put in the right 
avenues, and under the right inspirations, these men 
would have been thinkers, and their life like the out- 
pouring of music. One half of the energy of life is 
badly applied 



* 



It is a great deal better that a man should be a suc- 
cessful carpenter, than that he should be a poor minis- 
ter of the Gospel. It is a great deal better that a man 
should be a successful blacksmith than that he should 
be a drivelling lawyer. Any thing by which you can 
serve God by your success is respectable. 



238 THE CROWN OF LIFE, 



* 
*■ *■ 



The church is a garden of the Lord where men are 
planted for the sake of growing. There is no charm 
in it, no promise in it ; but there is culture, hopeful- 
ness and helpfulness in it. Not but that a man may 
live a Christian life outside of the church — he may. 
So a man may raise fruit on the side of the road; but 
the boys will be very apt to steal it ; whereas, a shel- 
tered tree behind the wall will carry its fruit to the 
right hands, and will be permitted to ripen it fully. A 
man may live a Christian life outside of the church ; 
but he will be an extraordinary man if he does. 
There are some extraordinary men who do. I do not 
wish to instill in your minds any superstition that you 
cannot live a Christian life unless you join the church. 
You can. A man may go to California across lots if 
he has a mind to; and if he gets there, he has got 
there — that is all; but that is not the easiest way, and 
it is not the way that would be most likely to get him 
there. A man may educate himself and never go to 
school ; but it is a great deal better that a man should 
go to school. It will facilitate his learning, and 
enlarge him in many ways. 



* 
* * 



Can a man become a Christian without acknowledg- 
ing Christ? Just as far toward it as an apple can 
ripen without acknowledging the sun. An apple can 
grow, and get size, and get shape, and get juice with- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 239 

oiit the shining of the sun ; but I will defy any apple 
to gft sweetness cut of that juice. I will defy any 
apple to change its sour sap into sweet sap, until it has 
the sun shining on it. And no man can become a 
Christian without the supernal light. 

You may carry a lighted candle into a conservatory; 
but it will coax out no blossom. If, however, you let 
the sun shine in on the plants, a thousand blossoms 
will come out at once. And there is no mere human 
element that will ever bring out the blossoms of the 
soul. You must get the Sun of Righteousness to 
shine into the soul if you would have it blossom. 

* 

The spirit of the Gospel is democratic. The tend- 
ency of the Gospel is leveling, leveling up — not down. 
It is carrying the poor and the multitude onward and 
upward. It is said that democracies have no great 
men, no heroic men. Why is it so? When you raise 
the average of intelligence and power in the commun- 
ity it is very hard to be a great man. That is to say, 
when the great mass of citizens are only ankle high, 
when among the Lilliputians a Brobdingnagian walks, 
he is a great man. But when the Lilliputians grow 
until they get up to his shoulder, he is not so great a 
man as he was by the whole length of his body. So, 
make the common people grow, and there is nobody 
tall enough to be much higher. 



240 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






The great mistake is maae of supposing that an 
intellectual system is the Gospel. I am sure that there 
is no Gospel except that which is in the lives of men. 
The wisdom of God in the production of gentleness, 
sweetness, patience, long-suffering, disinterestedness 
and self-sacrifice — that is the Gospel. 

Ideas are not Gospel; dispositions are Gospel; and 
he who brings to men thoughts of liberty in all things 
right and noble and good, and cheerfulness, and lova- 
bleness, and forgiveness, and patience, and long- 
suffering, and gentleness in the warfare of this life — 
he that lives Christ knows Christ, and can preach 
Christ. Nobody else can. You may bring me a cata- 
logue of fruits ; all the fruits of earth do not taste 
good out of a catalogue. Bring me one cluster from 
the orchard, that touches at once my palate and my 
imagination. Gospel living is the only ordination that 
can make a man God's priest and God's minister. 

The power of the Gospel is in the living of it, and 
not in the proclaiming it. 

No man can preach any more of the Gospel than he 
has living in himself. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 241 



* 



Sentiments are not despicable because the}^ do not 
work at the mill, because they do not plow, because 
they bring no fruit for the counter or the till, because 
they have no money value. Sentiments are not indif- 
ferent and worthless. The riches of life are in them. 



* * 



People of much sentiment are like fountains, whose 
overflow keeps a disagreeable puddle about them. 



* * 



There is a providence of God, of a thinking of God 
for us; but it is no such providence or thinking as 
ever takes the place of, or interferes with, our own 
personal wisdom. There is a providence of God, but 
it never weaves cloth. 






I have noticed that God's providence is on the side 
of clear heads. 






We are the children of the King, and though yet 
our crown is not stretched out to us, though our hands 
are too feeble to hold the scepter, we are not unknown 
wonders in this life. We are well known and thought 
of, and our names are registered, and our places kept, 



242 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

and all the joy of heaven, that so many myriads pos- 
sess, is ours. 

The care of no bird that flutters over her nest to 
feed her young, and the care of no mother who 
watches the cradle for her babe, is to be compared 
with God's tender care for us. 



* 



I think the whole round globe is but a cradle, and 
that God rocks it with his foot. 

t 

God's designs are seeds planted in human affairs — 
the seed tells the story of its destiny as fast as it 
grows, no faster. 

God's methods of gaining victories, of securing 
results, frequently defeat our wisdom. We are in 
the smoke and confusion of the battle, confused and 
blinded. 

Like children we like to drive until affairs begin to 
run away with us; then we cry out, "Where is our 
Father .? " 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 243 



* 
* *= 



God's providence is wiser than man's judgment of 
his own needs. We are to bear in mind that this life 
is a mere planting-time. We are started here; we 
await transplantation through resurrection, and what 
may seem the neglect of God and a want of provi- 
dence will reveal itself a step beyond, as being an 
illustrious Providence, watchful, tender, careful. 



* 



One of the things that makes life endurable is that 
we are not like so many stones, rolled, broken and 
rattling down by violent torrents, without any particu- 
lar force of design; but that we are grouped together 
in communities and in families; and, as individuals, 
under the beneficent inspection of God, who has a 
continual thought of our welfare. The world would 
seem to me a very dreary place if I did not believe in 
the immanence of the Divine Mind and the interfer- 
ence of the Divine Will. The belief in a special 
Divine Providence brings with it great peace and con- 
fidence, and is exactly suited to the ignorance and 
helpless condition of the human race. A chariot 
with no driver, an engine with no engineer, a voyage 
and no captain or officers, a raging battle and no 
commander — what would all these events be in com- 
parison with undirected human life upon this whirling 
globe, in its endless passage through time, disease, 
revolution, wars? 



244 • THE CROWIV OF LIFE. 






I plant my hollyhock seeds; and as the season goes 
on I see that they were good seeds, and that they are 
all coming up. I rejoice in them. I take them up, in 
due time, and transplant them to beds where, separa- 
ted, they shall have a chance of root-room and nour- 
ishment and growth. Later I go and look at them, 
and by that time I find that they are all crested with 
leaves. As they do not blossom the first year, I take 
them up and put them where I want them. The next 
spring I look at them again. Winter has not killed 
them. All is going right, with good soil, good roots, 
good leaves ; and they are beginning to throw up the 
important central stem, and it goes on and up and up. 
Finally the buds begin to appear. Then comes some 
blundering man with hoe or hand, and cuts off the 
top ; and they do not grow further. Now, was not the 
root a very good thing ? Were not the basilar leaves 
very good things ? Was not the central stem a very 
good thing as far as it went ? But when it was cut off 
you did not get any blossoms, did you } You lost the 
whole thing for which you had planted your holly- 
hocks. You had no blossoms, the end for which you 
planted. 

So, a man says, "Why, I have got up as far as 
morality." What then .? You have got as far as 
morality, and that is as high as you have gone. You 
have not come to buds and blossoms. If you change 
the figure from a hollyhock to a vine, you certainly 
have not come to fruit. It is a desirable thing to have 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 245 

a good root, but you cannot do anything with that 
alone. It is a very desirable thing that every root 
should have a stem, but what are you going to do with 
it ? It is very desirable that the stem should have 
blossoms ; but if a frost comes and cuts off your blos- 
soms what are you going to do for grapes ? You have 
lost the very thing for which you planted your vine- 
yard. Yet all the way up each particular step was 
important. 

# * 

Morality is the beginning of spirituality. No spirit- 
ual element ever existed without a foundation of 
morality. I have just been beholding with fresh de- 
light the achievements of the magnolia, which in 
spring carries at its very top the bright white cup, as if 
it were filled with the very ether and essence of sun- 
light and fragrance. And yet that cup, holding itself 
so, is dependent on that homely, dirt-colored root at 
the bottom. Destroy the root and you will destroy 
the cup. All the way from the bottom clear up to the 
top there is this perfect unity of organization and 
evolvement, and as the sweet censer of fragrance and 
beauty in the tree is intimately connected with its root, 
so morality and spirituality are one, only at different 
stages and positions of growth. 






Morals bear to spirituality the same relation which 
the root bears to the blossom and the fruit. We have 



246 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

been taught that morality will not avail us, and that 
spirituality is the only saving element; whereas, there 
is no spirituality itself without morality; all true spir- 
ituality is an out-growth, it is the blossom and fruit on 
the stem of morality. 

What is a revival of religion ? It is simply a phe- 
nomenon in common with a multitude of others in 
v^ariety, by which the feelings of men gather strength 
by the collected and connected feelings in the same 
direction of the multitudes in society. It is easy to 
do business when business rushes and everybody is in 
the market ; it is easy to be patriotic when the whole 
community is roused to that one current of thought. 
Fashion becomes very catching indeed when every- 
body is bent upon this superlative quality; the run of 
the mind is helped by the run of other minds in the 
same direction. Now when revivals of religion are 
"got up", as it is said, it is simply a natural bringing 
together of men, and by teaching and singing, bring- 
ing their thoughts into the same channel until one 
with another they coalesce, and the fire is kindled and 
it flows on, and the man finds himself segregated from 
his old companions and habits, and he finds it is 
easier to turn his thoughts to religion and the pur- 
poses of reformation than it would be if he stood 
alone. It is hard to make one brand burn itself out, 
but put plenty together and you kindle a fire that con- 
sumes them all. There is no reason, therefore, why 
there should not be these methods in religion which 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 247 

we denominate "revivals", applying to the highest 
things of life that which we are accustomed to apply- 
to all the fundamental and lower developments of 
human society. 

As God gives a great seed-time, and a great and 
general harvest, to every year, and yet fills up the 
months with incidental and perpetual blossoming and 
ripening of some sweet thing ; so he gives to every 
true and intelligent church constant budding, constant 
blossoming. But, besides that, in grander profusion 
— there is the greater harvest, in which the whole year 
opens its bosom and exhibits its vast richness ! There 
may be a harvest of cockles and chess, but that does 
not argue against true wheat or corn ! There may be 
an autumn for the crab-tree and the bitter sloe, but 
that does not take from the glory of the orchard, nor 
from the exquisite flavor of its superabundant fruits. 
There may be ascetic revivals, and revivals corrupted 
to mere zeal ; but there are also healthful revivals, 
sweet-hearted, full of love and joy, whose fruit is fra- 
grant and wholesome, as if plucked from the tree of 
life in the garden of God. 

Revivals of religion and all kinds of religious ser- 
vice in churches, that melt, lift, and inspire men to a 
higher life, are normal. No science is going to abol- 
ish them. You might as well put icicles under your 
kettle to get boiling water, as to put scientific prob- 



248 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

lems about electricity under the church to get luke- 
warmness boiling and evaporating. 






A single candle throws light to one man who reads, 
and only one. A hundred candles give light to every 
man in the house. A single stick does not create 
much warmth ; a fagot more ; a bonfire more yet ; and 
a furnace melts all things in its glow and heat. A 
single penitent thought limps ; a thousand men, all of 
them feeling the pressure of wrongdoing in the past, 
and the desire for elevation and inspiration, reflect 
their feeling one upon the other, and it becomes easy 
for each to do that which it would otherwise be 
almost impossible to do. 



* 



There can be no mode, however sacred, by which 
the new birth can be administered officially from with- 
out. It is simply a natural part of the unfolding 
series designed of God in the human constitution ; an 
illustration of that transcendent doctrine, that when a 
man has unfolded through the lower and intermediate 
stages, however wise, however useful, however humble, 
however good, there is in all these things no reason 
why he should not rise higher, and evolve from those 
lower preparatory stages into the higher and spiritual 
stages and instincts of the human mind. Conversion 
is part and parcel of this grand idea of unfolding. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 249 

When there dawns upon the human soul a concep- 
tion of supernal grandeur in power and illumination in 
wisdom- — a conception of that Nature whose love is 
most exquisite, passing the love of woman, passing a 
lover's love, passing the love of a mother, in length 
and breadth and intensity; when from the heavens 
above and around there comes to a human soul the 
conception that there is a Being with soul attributes, 
and the soul knows it, and is waked by it, as the cloud 
knows how to wake when the sun comes; when the 
human soul, having gained such a conception of God, 
begins to move, and to be filled and intensified by 
hope and faith and love, and to be wound up and 
kept in order thereby; when in this way God's love 
through Jesus Christ comes into the soul — then that 
soul is born again, re-created, without anything being 
added to it, simply by having that w^hich belongs to it 
regulated, trained, stimulated, washed, and made in 
spiritual things efiiuent and beautiful as angels are. 



* 
* * 



All ordinances are for the individual Christian who 
needs Christ. 

Who shall partake of this Lord's Supper? They 
that need something in life to help them ; they that 
need an inspiration to grow better; they that need 
some help to break off easily besetting sins ; they that 
need to have stability infused into their changeable 
purposes ; they that are in a fight with their selfish- 
ness, and avarice, pride, and want a Leader, a Captain 



250 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

of salvation ; they that are in sorrow and trouble, and 
want a Comforter ; all men that have distresses for 
which God is a physician. They are called. Only do 
not feign ; do not come through superstition ; come 
through trust and faith that this sets forth an all-help- 
ing Saviour. If you need help, come. 






Dogma is indispensable to religion, but it must be 
in its place. 

Ordinances are nothing unless they serve the weak- 
nesses of men. If a man can get along without them 
better than with them, he is at liberty to do it; but 
in dispensing with them he is not to despise religion; 
for religion does not consist in being a member of a 
church, or reciting the catechism, or repeating so 
much Scripture ; it is a living quality in the living 
man. It is the right exercise of right feelings all the 
time, toward God and toward men. 



* 

* # 



Ordinances are not to be despised, unless you put 
them in the place of God ; they are not to be despised 
if they lead you up to God, and so vacate themselv^. 
A ladder is a thing that a man must leave every round 
of, or else he will not get to the top. If a man takes 
just one step on the ladder, and stops there and roosts, 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 251 

the ladder is of no account to him ; the rounds of the 
ladder are things to be left behind or below. Multi- 
tudes of men there are that are so busy looking at the 
rounds of the ladder that t'hey do not see the angels at 
all up there; they are looking down to see if they are 
stepping right. 

After a long drought when the earth is athirst we 
do not say, ''O rain! fill my cup", and another, 
"O rain! fill my barrel". The God-ordained clouds 
march in grandeur through the heavens, they drop 
down their treasures freely, constantly, overflowingly, 
all through the day and through the night. They 
rain according to the multitude of the drops they con- 
tain in themselves, not according to the size of the 
cup you hold out. We hold out our little silver cup 
and with strong importunity cry out, " O Lord, bless 
me so much ! " and God is ready to bestow according 
to the fullness of his infinite nature. 



* 



All earthly symbols stop far this side of the abun- 
dance of God's goodness in the kingdom of grace. 
And this is above all human aspirations or desires- 
Consider how much men do ask ; in times when love 
makes the heart full as mountains make the streams 
in spring. What a wondrous literature is there in the 
prayers of exiles alone, what heart throes, and yearn- 
ings. Yet the bounty of God is above all that has 



2 52 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

ever been asked. But who does not know that there 
is more within the Ups than ever comes out of them. 
Who, then, can measure what the soul "thinks" — the 
flights of aspiration, the wishes, the yearnings for 
itself and even more for others. Yet after we have 
done the mightiest things thought, the highest felt the 
deepest, all that we have thought, or felt, or done, is 
but as the drop of dew upon the grass, in comparison 
with the ocean of God's goodness. 



* 
* * 



If you had the art to gather up all the sunbeams 
flashing through space, gilding every man, illumining 
the ice pallaces of the poles and burning in the luxuri- 
ance of the tropics, falling thro' the whole bright air in 
its liquid torrent, filling every flower-cup, resting on 
every blade of grass, gleaming on the prisoner's win- 
dow, and gilding the fetters of the slave, glorifying the 
humblest things and the highest — the sunlight in its 
wild abundance, ever since creation began, pouring its 
full, fresh, overflowing tide, you would then have God's 
own figure of the boundless copiousness of his com- 
passion — its inexhaustibleness, its application to every 
possible phase of human life. 

How strange that the most wonderful views of the 
Divine compassion are from Moses, and David the 
w^arrior-king. Noble old warrior ! Thy arrows turned 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 253 

not back, mighty ones fell beneath thy sword, but those 
silver shafts of song drawn from a quiver beyond 
Apollo's, pierce the heart not to slay but to heal. 
Like beams of sunlight they shine across the ages, fill* 
ing the hearts of nations with life and light and joy. 

O, how easy dost Thou forgive and forget ! As the 
waters cover the sands, so Thy love our barrenness. 
As the very waves forget their tempest-tossed condi- 
tion, so Thou speakest to our troubled souls and dark- 
ness flies, and tumult. 

Lord, we need Thy compassion every day, we are so 
unstable; our vision is often fugitive, we so frequently 
forget. Some days Thou dost lift us upon the Mount 
of Transfiguration, and all is divine, and we marvel at 
our unbelief, and fain would abi.de in those heights of 
joy and trust; and yet ere one day is passed how low 
the light has descended, and how feeble is the pulse, 
and how are we quickly turned to doubting, to fear or 
to irresolution ! We discern the right way, but how 
are we to follow ? How often our very best followings 
lead us astray ! How often are we conquered by that 
which should give us victory ! 






If God wants you to work, work ; but work out your 



254 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

true manhood. If He wants you to stand, stand ; but 
stand in your true manhood. If He wants you to lie 
down, lie down ; but, lying down, let your true man- 
hood shine out. 






This world is a world of anvils, of benches, of plows, 
of looms, of everything which indicates that men must 
work out their own salvation. Work may be said to 
be the birth-cry of creation to every man that comes 
into the world. 






Men must not plant over night and think they will 
reap the crop next morning. When men undertake 
any work, which involves the judgment of men and 
the conscience of men and the hearts of men, great 
patience is necessary, that they may in due season 
reap what they have sown. 






They need no monuments whose lives have been so 
fruitful that the result of their living is known and 
read of all men. When we pronounce their names, it 
is the opening of the door of history. Up springs to 
thought the representative influences set in motion 
and the deeds performed by them. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 2^5 






If you would work easily never let your work drive 
you. 






Men work; their whole life is a series of earnest 
labors ; and when they die they seem to themselves to 
have done very little ; for no man makes any account 
of the secondary influences which he exerts ; no man 
makes any account of what he stirs other people up to 
do ; no man makes any account of the work that he 
commences, but that is to be finished by future gener- 
ations. Men very seldom understand that that which 
they begin, and which they carry forward to a certain 
point, will inevitably fall into other hands and be con- 
summated by them. There are multitudes of men 
whose minds have been the leaven of the age in which 
they lived ; but dying, they seem to have done very 
little. They do not own houses and lands ; they have 
no bank stock. They seem not to have done much; 
but after all, dying, dead, their works follow them ; and 
men who come after them say, '' The whole magnitude 
of these results flowed from them". 






God says to some, "Work", to others, "Wait". If 
you are whelmed and whirled in the fury of battle, 
serve God there ; or if wounded and disabled you are 
dragged away from the scene of action, say, " Lord, is it 



2*56 THE CROWA^ OF LIFE. 

here Thou wouldst have me? Here then I wish to 
be." 

The question is not how much have you been able 
to do, but how completely have you done what you 
could. All God requires is that the whole soul be put 
to use. 

Prose is the work-day dress in which truths do sec- 
ular duty. Poetry is the robe, the royal apparel, in 
which truth asserts its Divine origin. Prose is truth 
looking on the ground ; eloquence is truth looking up 
to heaven ; poetry is truth flying upward toward God. 






I believe in foreign missions. I believe that they 
have their best results, however, at home. The old 
musket was far more effectual at the butt than it was 
at the muzzle, and the kick-back of the education 
which leads us to go out into all the world to preach 
the Gospel elevates the standard of devotion in our 
home churches ; and I think our home churches are 
more profited than the heathen ones, although they are 
helped. 

Christianity is the science of right living. It is the 
new manship of the world. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 257 



# 



Whatever elements go to make men deeper, higher, 
wider ; whatever enlarges man's horizon ; whatever 
makes him an heir of two worlds, and worthy to be 
made king, not by an outward crown but by a crown 
of the heart; whatever makes him more like God, 
and more deserving of the love of God — all of that 
belongs to Christianity; and the unexpressed part of 
Christianity is a thousand times more than that which 
has been expressed. 

Christianity is the alphabet, and life is the literature 
which springs from that alphabet. 

Let men search for hidden records — for the foot- 
steps of God on the Globe. Let men make discov- 
eries in the stellar depths. Let men develop new 
economies and philosophies. Let men open up other 
realms of knowledge. Let whatever there may be in 
the sphere of human society be disclosed. It does not 
follow that it is not in harmony with religion because 
it is not a part of that which is hereditary and conven- 
tional. Christianity in its nature is interminable, uni- 
versal, unfathomable. That belongs to Christianity, 
which is sanctified, divine manhood in men. 



# 
* # 



The man that knows God's laws in the world and 
conforms to them, has God in him, working for him. 
I cannot grind as the old mill did, but I can make a 
river do it for me ; I cannot control the elements, but 



258 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

electricity can fix them so that they run across the 
ocean, and can make them Ught cities. If anybody 
who understands God's law obeys it, that law turns 
round and says, "Well, stranger, what do you want? 
I will do it for you ". Obedience to Divine law is lib- 
erty, power, satisfaction. 

The law of creation is that the higher forms of 
development require more labor than the lower. Re- 
ligious life becomes more difficult in proportion as it 
comes up higher. It is not very hard for a woodsman 
to cut down a tree. There are many who cut a tree 
down in a day. It is not very hard for the mill owner 
to saw it up. The old saw rips through it and sings 
all day long. It is not very hard for a man to bring it 
up into the shop and cut out the rough furniture. 
When it is cut up the difficulty grows, and a little 
more as it is cut cut and as the fitting comes; and 
when the fitting and the rough dressing are over, then 
begin to come the real difficulties. It has got to go 
through the finer processes, and the last hand that 
puts the last touch of beauty and polish upon it is the 
rarest hand in the whole force. There are five hun- 
dred men that can do rough cabinet work where there 
is one man that can do the artistic and finer cabinet 
work. That is true of every department of human 
life. It is easy to begin those things, but the difficul- 
ties increase. It is often said, when men speak of the 
crowded state of things and the difficulty of getting 
along, "There is room at the top". There is always 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 259 

room at the top, but the difficulty is in getting there. 
There is always room at the top for learning. As you 
go on in life the difficulties increase, of finer justice, of 
a finer sense of love, of a finer sense of propriety, of a 
finer sense of effluence that comes from the high 
development of all the faculties, of a finer sense of the 
irradiation of a noble life, of a finer sense of forbear- 
ance and self-denying, of a finer sense of being under 
the active influence in the forthgoing of the energies 
and faculties that tend to make heroic. Christian man- 
hood. These difficulties increase ; and I think a true 
man of God never feels so little like a true man as 
when he is nearest like it. The sense of that which 
remains to be accomplished is greater than the sense 
of that which has been attained. 






All real laws that are beneficial to human society 
are God's laws. They may be enacted at Albany or 
Washington, and the very enactors may in themselves 
not be specially dignified nor worthy of our particular 
confidence ; but where law gathers up usage, where 
law authenticates what has already been demonstrated 
by experiment, and gives to it the sanction of the uni- 
versal judgment and conscience, that law is Divine. 
It is Divine no matter whether it touches a man's 
body, or his intellect, or his soul. There is relative 
importance or gradation of importance in it, but 
whether it touches men nearly or remotely, it is a 
Divine moral law. 



26o THE CROWN OF LIFE.. 






A man who is just as good as the law makes him is 
a mean man. 

■% * 

Laws depend upon human intelligence for their 
achievements. In their wildest state natural law^s are 
only half fruitful. Winds have roamed like wild giants 
over the globe, roaring hither and thither, before there 
was a human population ; but now they grind the food 
of man by turning windmills, or swell the sails that 
carry men for all their purposes round and round the 
world. The wild wind that knew no master is appren- 
ticed to ten thousand masters to-day. Human reason 
has taken possession of it and made it work for its 
living. Water floated in the clouds or stormed on the 
sea, or rushed forth in useless rivers. It, too, has 
been reduced to service, everywhere turning wheels, 
everywhere replenishing the supplies of society through 
the medium of manufactories ; and even in the desert, 
by irrigation, making the wilderness to bud and blos- 
som as the rose. Water had never done that of itself \ 
water inspired by human will does it. 

Electricity, the great buffoon of the North in winter 
nights, flashes, too, in storms — the pyrotechnist of the 
world. But to-day it is subdued. Now, shut up in 
boxes, it heals the sick. It lights our streets and 
dwellings. It plays post-boy and carries news in the 
twinkling of an eye around the whole world. In its 
early day, untouched by the will of man, what did the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 261 

electric element do ? It was worthless, barren, fruit- 
less, or fruitful only of harm to the works of man ; and 
it became very fruitful to all functions of good simply 
because the will of man learned to utilize it. 

Not by violating, either, but by using the laws of 
Nature, men can and do create a providence ; and thus 
we come back to the gist of the matter. I can use the 
laws of Nature so that they shall be a providence to 
me, and I can use them so that they shall be a provi- 
dence to my family. 

* 

In proportion as things are complex, and work 
toward fine results, delay is characteristic of them. If 
you look at the seasons, you find that there are some 
things which, early in the spring, rush right up with 
the first relaxation of the winter, develop themselves 
and come to an end. 

There are many things — for instance, the asters, 
and the chrysanthemums — which grow all summer 
long, and do not look out with rosy blossoms upon you 
until just before the frost cuts them down. There are 
many things which grow all summer long, and which, 
when the winter finds them, have not done their duty, 
or at any rate their work ; and it is not until the end 
of another summer that they show forth the nature 
that is in them. And then there are a great many 
things which neither in one year, nor in two years, nor 
in twenty years, show what they are. They require 
more time for their development. You can grow a 
head of lettuce in the space of six weeks ; but you 



262 • THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

cannot grow a hollyhock in less than two years; and 
you cannot grow an oak tree in fifty years. 

To make an old-fashioned loom was not a very, 
laborious thing; one could almost hew it out with an 
ax; but to make a power loom is a very different 
thing. No man can do that with one tool nor with 
twenty. The one could be built in a few days; the 
other requires months in which to be built. The dif- 
ference lies in the greater convenience of the latter, in 
its complexity, and in the excellence of the results 
which it is expected to work out. 

When you want low things, common things, you can 
have them quick ; but if you want high and good 
things, you must wait for them. 



# 



It is a great thing to know how to work; it is also 
a great thing to know how to wait. It is very easy 
for some persons to know how to be energetic and 
enterprising; but they know also how to be irritable 
and impatient when energy and enterprise do not 
speedily bring the fruit which they are after. To 
know how to work, and to know just as well how to 
wait; to have all the drive of enterprise, and besides, 
to have undomitable patience in waiting for the fruit 
of enterprise — this is to be a completed man — a true 
workman of God. 

They are of as much worth whom God is holding in 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, 263 

reserve, as those who at the front of the battle do the 
actual fighting. 

It matters not if men roll my name about in slan- 
derous reports, as a boy would roll a foot-ball down a 
dirty street, so long as the cause of God succeeds. 



* 



But is the gate out of which hell comes ; and If is 
the other leaf of that gate, for it is a double-leaved 
one. If and but have destroyed more souls than any 
fiend in hell. 

A man who with open eye and clear understanding 
permits wrong to be done without protest and without 
resistance up to the measure of his power, has respons- 
ibility for the sum total of all that wrong. If in a 
partnership two, three, or four men proceed upon a 
deliberately dishonest method of conducting business, 
and one man knowing that it is wrong, is peaceable, 
the responsibility is his. Nobody has a right to be 
peaceable when there is sin around, and when it is 
surrounding him. If there is this wrong doing he 
cannot say to himself, "There are four partners and 
I shall only have about a fourth part of this respons- 
ibility". You have the whole of it! God does not 
make dividends in those things. 



264 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






I hate a man built on the pattern of a wasp, beau- 
tiful all the way down, with all his forces centered in 
a sting. 



* 
# * 



Many a man will steal or embezzle, for years, and 
never once call it by the right name — never! If he 
happen to say to himself, " I am a thief ", he will 
spring back as if God had spoken to him ; it is like 
poison to him. "Thief!" I don't believe you could 
make many men steal in that way; but financiering is 
a very different thing. Call it "stealing.'"' Oh, no; 
call it an arrangement. Call it "thieving.?" Oh, no; 
call it an unfortunate affair. Call it "robbery.'"' Oh, 
no ; an unfortunate mistake. We talk about bandag- 
ing our eyes, but I think men bandage their eyes with 
their mouths oftener than in any other way. 



# 



A fit speech is like a sweet and favorite tune. 
Once struck out it may be sung or played forever. It 
flies from man to man, and makes its nest in the heart 
as birds do in trees. 

The tongue is the key-board of the soul. But it 
makes a world of difference who sits to play upon it. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 265 






The tongue of man cannot be described. It has 
deep and inward relations. It has national and polit- 
ical bearings. It is the silver bell of the soul, or the 
iron and crashing hammer of the anvil. It is like a 
magician's wand, full of all incantation and witchery; 
or it is a sceptre in a king's hands and sways with 
imperial authority. 



* 



There never has been yet upon the face of this 
earth, under any kingdom, in any period, anywhere, 
such an exhibition of submission to the Divine will 
as has been shown by the slaves of America. There 
were four millions of men during our war that knew 
just as well as their masters did that this was a war 
either for slavery or for liberty; they were couched 
down in the families of their masters, and the South- 
ern armies had drafted almost every able-bodied man 
away from the plantations and away from the villages, 
and the land was really in the power of the Africans 
that were left at home ; they knew their wrongs, they 
knew that their children had been sold from their 
arms; they knew that they lived in darkened huts and 
cottages, deprived of the elements of civilization ; they 
were sensitive to it ; and yet during that whole period 
of five years there was never a record made of cruelty 
on the part of the slaves to the helpless families of 
their masters. There never was an insurrection dur- 
ing that period in all the length and breadth of the 



266 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

Southern States. Prayers there were, and singing and 
tears for deUverance, and faith in God that the day 
was coming and that they were to be free; but they 
sat down in perfect patience and in fidelity to their 
masters during that great struggle. If there ever were 
men, by multitudes, by millions, that fulfilled the 
Apostolic comn.and to be faithful to those that were 
their masters in the Lord, it was the American slaves. 






Everywhere, the best heroes in the world are those 
that have no trumpets blared before them. After 
times will praise them. 

It is only so much of Christ as we carry to heaven, 
that will make us heroes there. 



* 



It is not doing great things that constitutes hero- 
ism ; it is not doing brilliant things ; it is doing things 
which indicate an appreciation of a higher manhood. 

Occasions do not make heroes; they merely develop 
them. Where it is shown it belongs to a man, and 
it merely flashes out upon occasion. 



# 



Do not think that conspicuity is necessary to hero- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 267 

ism. Only now and then is a gold vein found and 
brought to light; but the mountains are full of gold 
veins. Only now and then is a pearl found and worn; 
but there are myriads of pearls hidden in oysters 
beneath the waters of the sea. And there are many 
heroes obscured by coverings as homely as the oyster; 
and when God makes up his jewels, not one of them 
shall be left out. Do not say, " Nobody will know it 
if I am heroic". Yes; somebody will know it whose 
touch is immortality, whose love is better than owner- 
ship of the round world, and who has reserved for'you 
a life higher than that of the body, nobler than that of 
the flesh. 

It is a glorious thing to have a freshet in the soul ! 
To have the better feelings overflow their banks and 
carry out of the channel all the dull obstructions of 
ordinary life. It reveals us to ourselves. It aug- 
ments the sense of being. In these higher moods of 
feeling there is intuitional moral instruction, to the 
analysis of which the intellect comes afterward with 

slow steps. 

* 

There is but one first time to anything; and he is 
foolish indeed that squanders it by giving himself to 
analysis, instead of yielding himself to sympathy and 
enthusiasm ; and the more artless and unashamed his 
enjoyment, the better. Pleasure and inspiration first, 
analysis afterward. 



268 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
# * 



When a man has in him the consciousness that this 
Ufe is but the prelude — is but the morning star of 
existence, the sunrise of His might — when we believe 
that the Divine Spirit is diffused through all things in 
this world — God is everywhere, above, below, either 
side, impending, universal, constant, and continuous; 
when we live in Him as men live in sunshine — when 
a man is in that state of mind, and all his thoughts are 
heavenward, or else earthward for the groanings of the 
captives that they may be delivered- — when a man 
lives in that state and it becomes his necessary life, 
his joy and his enthusiasm, such a life as that cannot 
be a barren one in the flesh. 






A dull, watery, sluggish brain may do for a Conserv- 
ative ; but God never made them to be fathers of prog- 
ress. They are very useful as brakes on the wheel 
down hill; but they never would draw anything up hill 
in the world. 

Strong natures, strong enough to overturn old 
errors, and fight great battles, are likely to be too 
strong to walk safely in harness and drag our phae- 
tons and chaises. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 269 

Those who look with fear and suspicion upon enthu- 
siasm agree not with the teaching of God. Many are 
inchned to suspect those who have a momentum of 
goodness, they think where there is growth there is 
danger of rankness. The danger* of poverty and bar- 
renness is more to be feared. If people felt about 
spiritual poverty as they do about temporal poverty we 
should have more and better Christians. No man can 
become a Christian without being in some degree an 
enthusiast, though persons differ in this respect in 
original temperament. A heart deepened and en- 
riched by the love of Christ flows over and over 
beyond possibility of measurement. The kingdom of 
God is not in the head but the heart. 



* 
* * 



No man can understand God by the intellect; no 
man can understand God by any ratiocinative process. 
But He that is filled with the afflatus of love knows 
and feels God, just as a man knows when it is summer 
without looking in his almanac; God is in him, round 
about him, above him, below him. 



* 
* * 



Sin is of the will ; infirmity is of ignorance and 
weakness. Men have not learned how to use the fac- 
ulties w^hich in ascending gradations demand vast 
experience. It is the richness of human nature that 
confuses man and makes duty so difficult. Shall the 



270 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

hand require long practice before it works skilfully and 
achieves success, and the mind not demand time, cul- 
ture, practice, before it can work harmoniously within 
itself, and amid the external distractions of social and 
civil life ? Men are responsible for sin, but not for 
infirmity. Infirmities are the mistakes which men 
make on their way to knowledge. Life is a trade, to 
be learned; a profession, to be gained by education; 
an art, requiring long drill. Man must learn his trade 
— the most complex, the most subtle, and the most 
difficult that ever was learned. No man learns it 
except by help of institutions, by public sentiment, by 
direct moral influences, brought to bear upon him. 
The education of a man should unfold his nature in 
harmony with himself, in harmony with his fellows, in 
harmony with God. The knowledge of how a man 
shall ascend from the control of his animal instincts 
requires a training, an education, that is not learned in 
a day, and was learned by the race only through slow- 
creeping centuries. 

If I say, " You have inherited from Adam a corrupt 
nature ", you may justly rise up and say, " I have not ; 
I inherited from my father and mother as pure a 
nature as ever descended to a child. There has no 
drop of Adam's bad blood come through to me." But 
if I say to you, " God has made man a progressive 
creature, beginning at the very bottom, on the line of 
the material, first the animal, then the social, then the 
intellectual, the aesthetic, the spiritual ; and every one 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 271 

of you should live so as to travel on and up. But you 
have not done it; you are living in the lower portions 
of your nature ; you are not acting becomingly to 
yourself or your Creator" — if I say this, there is not a 
man who can or will deny it. The doctrine of sin, as 
reflected in the philosophy of Evolution, will carry 
more power, and have more effect upon the conscience 
and the aspirations of men, and upon the desires 
for a higher and better life, than any other. It will 
explain to them the road by which they are to travel, 
and the directions they are to take, away from appe- 
tites and passions, and will enable them to live more 
and more perfectly in the higher ranges of emotion 
and moral sensibility. 

Adam's sin was his own, and no one else's. It 
never descended. There is none of it in all the world. 
No immersion, effusion or sprinkling does any infant 
need to cleanse from Adam's sin. A single drop is 
enough for the whole world and for all ages. A 
microscope of ten thousand million power, in examin- 
ing the infant soul, could not magnify and bring into 
vision one single solitary speck of anything Adam did 
or did not do. 

The old theology makes sin to spring from a cor- 
rupt nature. I make it spring from a nature not cor- 
rupted, but not unfolded nor harmoniously developed. 
Both Evolution and the New Testament show that sin 



272 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

springs from the struggle for the relative ascendency 
of animal and spiritual in man's double nature, and 
that the conflicts of life are simply the conflicts 
between the lower and upper man. 






Sin is a term that applies to the act of violated law; 
and whoever purposely violates a known law sins. If 
he violates laws not known to him, or without deliber- 
ation, it is infirmity; but all sin is simply the act of 
the sinner, and it must have the element of voluntari- 
ness in it, or it ceases to be sin. All the doctrines 
that speak about sins as a kind of soot in the channels 
of a man, in the flues, as it were, of his life, as hered- 
itary sins, or as imputed sins, are a part of the 
pagan nightmare of mediaeval theology. Whoever does 
wrong, knowing that he does, and for a purpose, sins; 
whoever neglects a duty, and knows it is duty, 
sins. The purpose, affirmatively or negatively viola- 
ting God's law, is sinning. 

* 
* # 

It has come down in the catechisms and in the 
creeds of Christianity not only that our first parents 
fell by their transgression, but that in consequence of 
their fall the curse passed upon the whole human fam- 
ily, and that there has not been a man made right 
from that day to this. What sort of a god do you 
present, then t If in the fall of the family the conse- 



THE CJWWN OF LIFE. 273 

quences rested upon them that transgressed, we 
should have no legal objection to such a sentence; 
but to say that the unborn millions that had no part 
nor lot in the transgression of our first parents were to 
suffer degradation and annihilation, as it were, in conse- 
quence of a sin that they never committed nor gave any 
consent to is to establish an idea of justice that would 
turn heaven into tyranny and God into a malefactor. 

But that is not the worst of it. That after such an 
imputation of sin that men knew nothing about, God 
should have gone on and turned the crank of creation, 
and multiplied them, and multiplied them, and multi- 
plied them, swarming the earth with them in every 
generation — why, what would you think of a doctor 
who should go about inoculating men with mad- 
dogism, in this world? How long would you let him 
stay.? How long would you let a man with small-pox 
wander up and down t But suppose a man were to 
create it, and should be suffered to go into society! 
All the instincts of justice, all the humanities, rise up 
against the continued creation of inevitable and 
unbounded evil. 

We often speak of the folly of those who, inheriting 
an old estate with grand old trees of a century's 
growth, whose majestic arches of boughs and massive 
foliage diffuse a perpetual twilight coolness, level 
these monarchs with the dust — and then when the 
heats of summer come bethink themselves of shade, 
and forthwith set out little shadowless sticks — such is 



274 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

the folly of those who forsake the shadow of the tree 
of life, for the miserable shade of their own hands' 
planting. 

Men seem to think that they have to wait till there 
is some feeling given to them before they can repent. 

How much wind does a vessel need to get out 
of harbor? A tornado.'' A gale? A fresh, strong- 
blowing breeze ? Open your sails, and if there is 
nothing but a zephyr, if it swells the sail and gives 
steerage way, and you can go slowly out the harbor, 
you have wind enough ; you might do better with 
more, but this will answer your purpose. 

Our Saviour is forever saying to men, " Let me help 
you" — and the moment a man wants to be helped, 
and says to Christ, "Help me", the work has begun in 
him. 

Repentance is difficult only to a low and mean 
spirit. Where wrong has been committed acknowl- 
edgment and amendment is a necessity to a noble 
nature. It is the triumph of the generous feelings 
over the worse and meaner ones. 



When a man defers becoming a Christian deliber- 
ately to the end of life, saying to himself, " I will get 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 27$ 

all the pleasure there is in life first, and then, at the 
end of life, I will take a turn and save myself" — such 
a man is a sneak ; he is a cowardly fellow, a dishon- 
orable man, and Satan outwits him nine times out of 
ten. The hour of weakness, when the eye is clouded 
and the world is reeling, is not the hour for one to 
make that great vow and dedication of himself and of 
his powers to God. "Ah, but the thief on the cross 
— he was converted, was he not?" I think he was 
saved, but I think he had a good many awkward years 
after he got in Paradise before he knew how to behave 
himself even decently, and a man must be low down 
on the scale when he takes a thief for his example. 






Hard as it is to transplant the tree of your soul, dif- 
ficult as it is to sever the roots that hold it down, the 
Master says, "There is power to do it". However 
many faults you may have, that branch their roots out 
in every direction, and difficult as it is to transplant 
them by ordinary instrumentalities ; nevertheless, faith 
in the soul will give you power to pluck them up by 
the roots, and cast them from you, or transplant them 
to a better soil, where they will grow to a better 

purpose. 

* 

O, fool ! O, double fool ! You who insure your 
ships by sea, and your warehouses by land ; you who 
guard yourselves and your gold, your bonds and you" 



276 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

mortgages, but leave your souls exposed in peril to all 
the wiles and influences of the world ! With no insur- 
ance, and with no hope, without God and without 
hope in the world, are you not a double fool ? Is it 
not time to cease your folly and begin to be wise ? If 
you are going to begin, why not to-day? And if 
to-day, why not now? And if now, why not in the 
very solitude of your soul accept Christ who says, " I 
stand at the door and knock". Open the door, and 
say to him, "By Thy help I will live for Thee". 



# 
^ * 



I do not believe in the old stiff, ledger-like account 
of a man's conduct, so that just so many sins are set 
down against him, and just so many virtues are set 
down to his credit. I believe the soul's life with God 
is like the child's life with the mother. Do you sup- 
pose, when a child has a great, true-hearted mother, 
that she keeps an account of all its imperfections? 
Do not you know that she pours over the child such 
a flood of love that, though its life is not perfect, 
though its whole being is imperfect, yet through sym- 
pathy and kindness and forgiveness, she accepts it 
with complacency, as though it were perfect? And I 
believe the soul rises into such a communion with 
God that, though in its relations to time and space it 
may be subject to a thousand imperfections and dis- 
cords, yet those imperfections and discords are over- 
looked and excused by God's great love. When I 
walked one day on the top of Mount Washington (glo- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 277 

rious day of memory! Such another day I think I 
shall not experience till I stand on the battlements of 
the New Jerusalem) how I was discharged of all imper- 
fection ! The wide, far-spreading country which lay 
beneath me in beauteous light — how heavenly it 
looked ! And I communed with God. I had sweet 
tokens that He loved me. My very being rose right 
up into His nature. I walked with Him. And cities 
far and near — New York, and all cities and villages 
that lay between it and me- — with their thunder; the 
wranglings of human passions below me, were to me 
as if they were not. Standing as I did, high above 
them, it seemed to me as though they did not exist. 
There were the attritions, and cruel grindings, and 
cries and tears, and shocks of the human life below, 
but I was lifted up so high that they were nothing to 
me. The sounds died out, and I was lost with God. 
And the mountain-top was never so populous to me as 
when I was absolutely alone. 

So it is with the soul that goes up into the bosom of 
Christ. There is a reach where the arrows of envy 
cannot strike you. There is a reach where not even 
your sins can annoy you. Your soul may so rise into 
the bosom of God that your personal self shall seem 
annihilated. What you are you are by the grace of 
God. You may receive such an influx of the life of 
God that you shall seem to yourself perfect. 






Do not suppose that that man is a Christian that 



278 THE CROIVIV OF LIFE. 

has a poetic and dramatic experience, and you are not 
one because you have only a drudging journey which, 
with muddy shoes, you are seeking to perform. Wlien 
a man is on the road, and slips up or falls down, he 
does not turn round and go home saying, "I will not 
journey". He plucks himself up, and shakes his gar- 
ments, and goes on. You may be a very poor Chris- 
tian, probably you are- — we all of us are — but at every 
stumble, and lapse, and everything that reveals to us 
how low we are down yet on the scale, take courage ; 
you have got God for you ; He is on your side, and 
all the universe may be on the other side and it won't 
amount to that. Who can harm us if God be for us? 
" Who can separate us from the love of Christ "i " 






I was a child of teaching and prayer; I was reared 
in the household of faith; I knew the Catechism as it 
was taught ; I was instructed in the Scriptures as they 
were expounded from the pulpit, and read by men ; 
and yet, till after I was twenty-one years old, I groped 
without the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. I 
know not what the tablets of eternity have written 
down, but I think that when I stand in Zion and 
before God, the brightest thing which I shall look 
back upon will be that blessed morning of May, when 
it pleased God to reveal to my wandering soul the 
idea that it was His nature to love a man in his sins 
for the sake of helping him out of them ; that He did 
not do it out of compliment to Christ, or to a law, or 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 279 

to a plan of salvation, but from the fullness of His 
great heart; that He was a Being not made mad by 
sin, but sorry; that He was not furious with wrath 
toward the sinner, but pitied him — in short, that He 
felt toward me as my mother felt toward me, to whose 
eyes my wrong doing brought tears, who never pressed 
me so close to her as when I had done wrong, and 
who would fain, with her yearning love, lift me out of 
trouble. And when I found that Jesus Christ had 
such a disposition, and that when His disciples did 
wrong, He drew them closer to Him than He did 
before — that when pride, and jealousy, and rivalry, 
and all vulgar and worldly feelings rankled in their 
bosoms. He opened His heart to them as a medicine 
to heal these infirmities ; when I found that it was 
Christ's nature to lift men out of weakness to strength, 
out of impurity to goodness, out of everything low and 
debasing to superiority, I felt that I had found a God. 
I shall never forget the feelings with which I walked 
forth that May morning. The golden pavements will 
never feel to my feet as then the grass felt to them. 

All natures come to their manhood through some 
experience of fermentation ! With some, it is a fer- 
ment of passions; with some, of the affections; and 
with richly endowed natures it is the ferment of 
thought and of the moral nature. 

We seek the highest peaks if we wish the widest 



28o THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

view. When God takes you by the hand and leads 
you up on the mountain of some peculiar experience 
and is transfigured before you, remember that vision, 
it may never return. Precisely the same experience 
is never repeated. There are times when the Sun of 
Righteousness is specially near in times of affliction, 
but men bow down their heads. The very time when 
God meant that we should see his inner nature and 
feel the pulse of his mighty government is spent in 
weeping and wiping of eyes. It is the time to lift up 
the head and attend to the revelation of God. 






There never will be two experiences exactly alike 
until you get two men exactly alike. 



* 
* * 



He that has come under the controlling influence of 
love to God and to man, and feels it every day, need 
not disturb himself and trouble his conscience how he 
got there. If he is there he is there. Do you not 
believe the sun rises ,'' You saw it yesterday morning 
come up over the horizon clear and radiant from 
the moment it struck the atmosphere. To-morrow it 
comes up under a cloud; it is noonday before you see 
the sun, but the sun rose then. And the Sun of 
Righteousness rises to some behind clouds, but to 
others in a clear sky ; it rises if the fruits of righteous- 
ness are developed in the conscience and the life. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 281 



* 

* ^ 



Don't wait for ideal experiences. Begin where you 
are. 






Our moral experiences are flashes. Would that they 
were such flashes as lighthouses give, which revolve at 
times with diminished and extinguished light, only the 
more to make emphasis with the renewed gleam on 
the eye of him who, afar off at sea, is reading the 
signs and tokens of the shore. Men do not intermit 
their experiences in this way. They let the fire go 

out. 

# 

Conscience is a good thing when it works in sun- 
shine and love, but when it works in acerbity con- 
science is a bull-dog that sits at the door and keeps 
out less mischief than it lets in. 



* 
■^ # 



One of the saddest effects in connection with the 
institutions of Christianity — not Christianity itself — 
has been that the line of their march has been a line 
of skulls and bones and blood, and the music of their 
progress has been sighs and weepings and sorrows. 
It has been clashing, quarreling, fighting; for let me 
tell you, that when the battle is set upon the con- 
science, there is no such battle as that known in this 



282 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

whole world. Let a body of men think that God has 
inspired them above everybody else — nay, laid on 
them the duty to declare and call men to believe cer- 
tain things ; and let another body be called at just the 
opposite side, both of them called of God, both of 
them raising big conscience, both of them defending 
the faith that was given to the saints, and history 
shows that there is no such quarrelsomeness on the 
face of the earth. Conscience is a good thing, con- 
science in love ; but conscience in hate is the very 
devil of ecclesiasticism. 

That man is a roue whose conscience is to let, and 
who runs equally well under all circumstances, and 
with all sorts of conduct. 

There is what might be called the microscopic con- 
science — it is a conscience that concerns itself prin- 
cipally about minute things, none for broad, large 
views, has no momentum in it, no trusting of itself, 
without which a man is but a poor creature — inverte- 
brate. A man ought to have a stride, not a pit-a-pat 
step, and there are multitudes of persons that are 
looking at little bits of things all the day long, little 
events going before and going behind, but in no large 
movement in right directions trusting themselves. I 
hold that as it is with the rail-car, so it is with the 
ship, when once the motion is impelled the momentum 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 283 

is of vast importance. And in society a man that is 
all the time stopping to see whether he is doing right 
or not, and analyzing his thoughts and his motives 
and his feelings without any knowledge of how to 
analyze; the man that is anxious because he did not 
know but he may have said something to-day; he is 
like a man that is so anxious that he stops his watch 
every few minutes to see whether it is going. 



* 
# * 



A great many men have a conscience for Sunday, 
but none for Monday. 

Oftentimes a text is like a gate which the children 
love to swing on, but at other times a text is that gate 
through which you go into the great fields beyond, 
and use it and pass on. 

Build up such a spiritual super-structure that every 
little child shall feel it to be easier to live a Christian 
life than an unchristian one. 






You must not be in a hurry or impatient. You 
have not lost a man because he doesn't take the truth 
the first time. 



284 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Do not be discouraged because after a year you 
look back on your ministry and see that it is a very 
imperfect and wretched one, and does not answer 
your ambition at all. That is one of the best symp- 
toms possible for a young man to have. 






A true call to the sacred ministry is the voice of 
God in you speaking through your highest and noblest 
faculties. Any other consideration than that is not a 
call of God, and there are very many called, but few 
are chosen. 






The art of putting a living heart on a living heart, 
that is the root of preaching. 






A minister ought to be the best informed man on 
the face of the earth. He ought to see everything 
and be interested in everything. 






A sermon like a probe must follow the wound into 
all its intricate passages. Nothing is too much for 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 285 

the surgeon or for the physician, nothing should be 
too common or too famiUar for the preacher. 



* 



When you are fighting the Devil shoot him with 
anything. 

Imagination, Emotion, Enthusiasm and Conviction, 
are the four foundation-stones of an effective and 
successful minister. 






All true preaching bears the impress of the nature 
of the preacher. 

Don't hold up any of the truths of the gospel in 
such a way that the man who looks at them shall say 
it is not possible to be sand. 






Great sermons ninety-nine times in a hundred are 
nuisances. They are like steeples without any bells 
in them ; things stuck up high in air, serving for orna- 
ment, attracting observation, but sheltering nobody, 
warming nobody, helping nobody. 



286 TBIi CROWN OF LIFE. 



#= 



A real master of men when one comes near to him, 
forms a judgment of the new-comer just as instinct- 
ively and as quickly as of a locomotive or a horse. 






Now, when a man has a call to the ministry, he is 
to preach Christ and to understand Christ. He may 
understand a good many things out of books, he may 
understand a great many things out of systems, he 
may help himself into perplexities of experience, but, 
after all, the man that is the true preacher learns by 
the indwelling of the Holy Ghost what was the nature 
of that love which led Christ Jesus to empty Himself, 
and to go down to the bottom as it were, to the feet of 
the universe, that when He lifted Himself up He 
should carry everything with Him. It is not enough, 
then, that you simply have an admiration of God, and 
an admiration of Jesus Christ, and an approbation of 
Him, but you must be Christ's yourselves according to 
the measure of your being. 






No man is fit to preach until he is fit to be sacri- 
ficed. A man that gives himself up to the work of 
preaching is bound to say in his ordination thought, " I 
will make a life-sacrifice of myself if God means it 
and requires it; but one thing I must do — I must be 



THE CROWN OF LIFE, 287 

true to my own best thoughts, my own best beUefs, 
whether the Church Ukes it or not." 






To preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to have 
Christ so melted and dissolved in you that when you 
preach your own self you preach Him as Paul did, to 
have every part of you living and luminous with 
Christ, and then to make use of everything that is in 
you, your analogical reasoning, your logical reasoning, 
your imagination, your mirthfulness, your humor, your 
indignation, your wrath, to take everything that is in 
you all steeped in Jesus Christ, and to throw yourself 
with all your power upon a congregation — that has 
been my theory of preaching the Gospel. 



* 
^ q 



If a Christian man's heart is the pulpit of Christ, no 
sermon is needed, for there is no act of his that is not 
a sermon glowing with love. 






The persimmon is a fruit that, while it is yet green, 
is bitter and puckery to the last degree, but when once 
it has been frosted, it is one of the sweetest of all 
the fruits; and there are a great many seeds — it is 
not until winter has dissolved in them the glue that 
they can open their shell and let out the root of the 



288 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

plumule. And there are many men that are not fit to 
be preachers until they have gone through the path of 
suffering and sorrow. 



* 



A man should introduce in his teaching something 
of everything that belongs to mankind ; its sacred rage 
and passion, its abhorrence of things evil, its genius, 
all imagination, all the radiance and sparkle of its wit, 
all the tenderness of its love, all that belongs to the 
sub-bass, also all that belongs to the very highest 
stops, that seek to rival the very bird-notes. That is 
the greatest preacher. 

A man who does not preach poor sermons will 
never be a good preacher. There would never be any 
mountains unless there were valleys between. You 
will never get sons of thunder in the pulpit until you 
get men that are willing to fail when fail they must. 



^ * 



Fishers of men. I should like to see fish caught by 
the charge of cavalry ! I should like to see fastidious, 
hidden, sensitive fish caught by thrashing the pool 
with your rod or fishing line. Ye are to be fishers of 
men; and as men study the nature of fish — the pout, 
the eel nestling in the mud, the fierce pickerel, the 
shining trout, the gamy black bass, the salmon or the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 2S9 

deep sea fish — and adapt their mode of fishing to the 
nature of the fish desired to be caught ; so men are to 
study the mode of influence of one soul upon another, 
in such a way as to make the truth which they would 
lay before men, and into the practice of which they 
would draw them, efficacious and successful. 

A man's truth is like bait on a hook — it must be 
such a bait as fish will take, and it must be on such a 
hook as will hold the fish. 






The humblest labor which a minister of God can do 
for a soul for Christ's sake is grander and nobler than 
all learning, than all influence and power, than all 
riches. 

If you would teach within the church, you must 
seek ordination at the hands of man. But whose 
heart soever God has touched with a spirit of benevo- 
lence is ordained to go forth into society and preach 
the gospel to every creature, each man speaking in the 
language of his own business. 






Sermons that bring forth nothing in better lives are 
poor sermons, no matter who preaches them. 



290 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






When a man pays his debts he preaches in a lan- 
guage that is understood by more men than when he 
preaches in almost any other language that is spoken. 



# 



A man should be born to the pulpit. The men 
that ought to preach should be ordained in birth. 
The laying on of hands can't make an empty head 
full, nor a cold heart warm, nor a silent nature vocal. 
A minister is a genius in moral ideas, as a poet is in 
beautiful ideas, and an inventor in physical ideas. 






Every minister ought to turn toward every gleam 
of light to see if there is not some instrument by 
which he can better touch the hearts of men. 



* 
* * 



There is no business so derogatory that culture is 
not compatible with it. 






There are none who stand hardship so well as 
those who are cultivated. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 291 



* 



Knowledge is that which a man knows. Intelli- 
gence is that which knows it. Knowledge bears the 
same relation to intelligence which invested wealth 
does to that spirit of enterprize which creates wealth. 
One is the active cause. The other is the product or 
effect of that cause. Where knowledge will not save 
men, Intelligence is a preservation force. 



* 

* * 



Folk's heads are pretty much like their garrets, where 
all the rubbish and broken things they've no use for 
down-stairs are stored away. 



* 
# * 



Much of knowledge is growth, not accumulation. 
The life one is living in is the book that men more 
need to know than any other. 






The hrst step toward knowing is to be conscious of 

not knowing. 

If all a man's necessaries of life go in at the port- 
hole of the stomach it is a bad sign. 



292 THE CROWiV OF LIFE, 






The folly of the few is that light which God casts 
to irradiate the wisdom of the many. 






Poverty is not disreputable, but Ignorance is ! 






In the dairy it may be all very well to have the cream 
on the top but it is very poor in society to have the 
thing repeated ; for society does not move by the force 
of its top — that influences some — but it is the average 
of the mass that either accelerates or retards the 
movements of society in advance. It is the hull and 
the freight, and not the sails alone, that determine the 
quickness of the voyage, and ignorance at the bottom 
of society benumbs society ; it is obliged to drag this 
vast bulk. It is like a gouty man trying to walk; he 
may be good at the top and all the way down, but his 
feet are not good, and he cannot walk. There can be 
no prosperity that is deserving of that name that 
leaves at the bottom a section of ignorance nearly 
equal to that in the middle or top of society. 



* 
* * 



All property is matter that has been shaped to uses 
by intelligent skill. Where intelligence is low, the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 293 

power of producing property is low. It is the hus- 
bandman who thinks, foresees, plans, and calls on all 
natural laws to serve him, whose farm brings forth 
forty, fifty and a hundred fold. The ignorant peasant 
grubs and groans and reaps but one handful where he 
has sown two. It is knowledge that is the gold mine, 
for although every knowing man may not be able to 
be a rich man, out of ignorance riches do not spring 
anywhere. 

Ignorant men are like bombs, which are a great 
deal better to be shot into an enemy's camp than to 
be kept at home, for where an ignorant man goes off 
he scatters desolation, and it is not safe to have igno- 
rant men. 

# 

Ignorance enslaves men among men, knowledge is 
the factor and the great creator of liberty and wealth. 






Ignorance is the fruitful mother of mischief. 



* 



Hope is an anchor that holds on to the bottom 
while the storms handle the ship, and enables it to 
outride the tempest. 



294 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 



Hope doesn't believe in sunset, nor in the rolling 
hours that bring round again the sunrise ; it is forever 
facing toward the east and waiting for the sun to rise. 
It is the power to live without bodily organization ; it 
is that element of the spirit that sees all that is unre- 
vealed by matter; it is that temper that lives in the 
glowing future and in the possibilities of blossom and 
fruit, of an eternal summer that lies before every man, 
that does not live in yesterday, that refuses to live in 
to-day, but that takes the eternal round of the future 
for its habitation. 



* 



Hope is the sweet eye that never looks backward, 
the disposition that eternally lives on, which cures 
present evil, remedies every mistake, by an eternal 
sunrise. 



* 



In the ministration of God's Providence in this 
world, tears and heartbreak, and all forms of moral or 
social suffering are good for what they do to a man 
who is sick or out of the way, but when he is brought 
by suffering into some affinity with the right way, suf- 
fering is not the type of the right way, but joy, peace, 
hope. We are saved by hope ; we are saved by the 
finer instincts and finer influences of the human soul; 
not by the dread, the captivity, the bondage, the 
crutch, the odious medicine. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 295 



* 



Do I believe in election ! I certainly do. I believe 
that some men are elected to be mathematicians, and 
some I know are not. I believe some men are elected 
to be poets; some are not. Some men are elected to 
think with the perceptive faculties, and some are left 
out of that election. Some are elected to be thought- 
ful with the philosophical faculties, and others are not 
so elected. Now there are a great many men who are 
"elected". That is, they are born of their mother 
and father with such moral susceptibilities that they 
can take in the idea of this soul-filling, soul-enriching 
and soul-rejoicing God. There are others that are 
born so that they can take it in but imperfectly, little 
by little, and only as the result of long continued edu- 
cation. This is election — receptive capacity. It is 
inside election, not outside election. 



* 
# * 



When a man emerges through the gate of death into 
the other land he is not perfect. No miracle is 
wrought on him. He goes from the primary school to 
the university. There is to be a wide sphere, and 
a long period — we know not how long — in which 
all these relatively developed or cruder elements of 
humanity will undergo in the next and higher sphere 
the working of the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. 



296 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
# * 



Some men think that they are converted because 
thefy had a horrible conviction, and because they said 
they were brought out of the miry clay, and had their 
feet set upon the rock. They look back to that expe- 
rience and they say, " I was converted at four o'clock 
in the afternoon on the tenth of June, eighteen hun- 
dred and so and so." Your clock may be right, but 
the thing itself is not perhaps worthy of a revelation ; 
for I have not been able to perceive that you are a 
particle less proud ; I think on some grounds you are 
more avaricious ; I think you have traded on your 
reputation for piety ; I think you have taken on airs 
by reason of your supposed now superiority. When a 
man is converted he says, " I saw a great light ". It 
was nothing but a tallow candle, and the wind blew it 
out very soon. Yet the man carries round his snuifed- 
out candle and says, " I was converted ". Some men 
who are converted carry about their lamps which are 
known by the smoking of the unburnt material, and 
they think that they have got a light. They do not 
bring forth the fruit of love. 






The very first intimation that any man has of a con- 
viction is when he begins to say to himself, "I am not 
living right ". 

If you want conviction of sin, try to live as you 
know you ought to live. If that does not convict you 
of sin I do not know what will. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. i^-j 



* 



To him that is born to sing, singing is a necessity; 
and to him that is born to sigh, sighing is a necessity. 
Some smile easily, and some are just as easily sad. 
Some think. Some feel. Each has his mood. 






A grumbling man might have a band of angels to 
pilot him around about the globe, and he could not 
find happiness. 






God loves cheerfulness and mirth, or he would not 
have sunk the fountains of them so deep in the best 
parts of the human soul. 






How useless are all frets and cares and bickerings, 
not only, but how much pain they bring; how they 
rasp life until its tender places are enameled, hardened 
with a mean and vulgar face. How inconsistent to be 
fretting, morose, fearing, dreading, trembling, and yet 
in our hymns and in our devotions to be calling our- 
selves the sons of God ! We wallow, and then sing 
that we are born again as heirs of eternal glory! If 
there be anything in this world that ought to mark a 
Christian man, it is not tears, not sorrow, not wailing, 
but joy in the Holy Ghost. Hope, trust, love — these 



298 THE CROWN- OF LIFE. 

are the Trinity. Now abideth faith, hope, love; and 
the greatest of these is love; but they are all indis- 
pensable. In these triune stars, this trinity of qualities, 
living in a world that is God's, under a providence 
and a spiritual ministration that is God's, in the hope 
of God and the certainty of immortality in Him, life 
ought to wear a smile, and sorrow itself to be a bene- 
diction. That man who misinterprets Christianity by 
going morosely and sadly through life ought to apolo- 
gize to every person to whom he comes, for his 
habiliment of sorrow, and for the mistranslation of 
God's government over him. 



* 
* * 



Two acres of wilderness adjoining — that is married 
life with multitudes of people. But where two strive 
together, not each for his or her own excellence, 
where the soul of each would throw its light over 
for illumination upon the other soul, how sacred is 
wedlock ! 

No man is married by his body to his wife, any 
more than two slaves are married that are linked 
together to go across the desert to their prison-house. 
All true marriage is inside. Men may be held and 
should be, by the law, to the fidelities of even the 
most exterior relationship in marriage; wedlock is 
sacred even at its very lowest contact; but oh, how 
many steps onward and upward does the marriage 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 299 

relation contain in itself! They are married that are 
agreeable in person to each other; they are married 
that intersphere in intelligence with each other; they 
are married that have reciprocal tastes; they are mar- 
ried that have love purities within the sphere of their 
crystalline beings ; they are married that are heroic 
together; and they are married that together aspire to 
live larger and better lives. 



* 
* * 



Men have a little boat of piety which runs up and 
down the waves of their experience ; but their life is a 
great hull of selfishness, the bow of which is rigged 
with the lower passions. 



# 
* * 



Indifference to men is a sin. It is not necessary 
to your being a criminal that you should murder, or 
commit burglary, or set a house on fire, or pick some 
man's pocket. If you take your culture, and taste, 
and sensibility, and wrap yourself up in them, and 
walk alone among your fellowmen, touching nobody, 
kindling nobody, sympathizing with nobody, except 
one here and there whom you select as a companion 
for yourself, you are criminal before God; and there 
is many a man who walks thus who is a greater sinner 
than the man who is hanged, for the law of Christian 
sympathy is absolute; it is the imperial law of the 
realm. It is the ideal of Christian life; and he who 



300 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

violates it by counting his fellowmen as nothing, as 
dust under his feet, as dirt, violates the fundamental 
law of the universe, and is a criminal. 






If there is one thing that stood out more strongly 
than any other in the ministry of our Lord it is the 
severity with which he treated the exclusiveness of 
men with knowledge, position, and a certain sort of 
religion, a religion of particularity and carefulness; if 
there is one class of the community against which 
he hurled his thunderbolts without mercy and pre- 
dicted woes, it was the scribes, Pharisees, scholars 
and priests of the temples. He told them in so many 
words, ''The publican and the harlot will enter the 
kingdom of God before you ". The worst dissipation 
in this world is the dry-rot of morality and of the 
so-called piety that separates men of prosperity and 
of power from the poor and ignoble. They are our 
wards. When God looks out of heaven. He looks at 
the bottom of things first and at the top last; and 
therefore he says, " He that will be chief among you, 
let him become your slave". He that would stand 
highest, let him be the man who has gone down to 
the very foundation of human life and society, in order 
to lift men up. As God gave himself for the salvation 
of the world, so the follower of Christ is to give his 
life-power for the salvation of the inferior and the 
lowest throughout the whole world. 



THE CROIVN OF LIFE. 301 



* 
* * 



Where the human soul acts inwardly, making all 
creation run in upon it, to fan it, to flatter it, to please 
it, to enrich it, the machinery is wound up the wrong 
way. It IS not thus that the soul is made to be har- 
monious or happy. When a man's nature acts centrif- 
ugally, going forth in the spirit of kindness and 
benevolence, he is happy. It is what a man does for 
others that constitutes true happiness — not what he 
does for himself. 






The dissipation of the top of the brain is worse 
than the dissipation of the bottom of the brain. A 
man who uses his knowledge and his moral training to 
increase his selfishness and his contempt of his fellow- 
men is worse than the man who abuses his natural 
passions and corrupts them. 



* 



How easy to be patient when we are sure that 
patience is victory! Wait, and die, and see, and be 
happy. 



* 
* * 



When I think how we, in all our crooked ways of 
deceit and dissimulation must appear to the peerless 
honor, the sensitive holiness and purity of the soul of 



302 THE CROWN' OF LIFE. 

God; patience seems the most stupendous of His 
attributes. 

If we find pain in the effort to do and to be right it 
is through the imperfection of our attainment. Per- 
fect consecration always brings peace and joy. 



* 



There is a peace that comes by quickening the tone 
of a man's nerves. It is not the peace of somnolency ; 
it is that perfect rest which the soul has when it is in 
all its members satisfied — filled full of that for which 
it hungers and thirsts. It is the rest of impletion. 
That is the testimony of ten thousand saints who have 
lived since the advent of Christ. It is peace not only 
in the ordinary avocations of life, but in all the exigen- 
cies that try men's souls. There has never been a 
dying saint that had profounder rest and peace in God 
than men have had who were fastened to the stake 
with fagots tied around their bodies, so great is the 
power of God upon the inward life. 



* 



It is high up that the most perfect peace is. There 
are places in the nooks and ravines of the mountains 
where there is peace ; but they who go up in balloons 
say that as they rise above the earth all sounds die 
away, and that high up in the pure ether there is per- 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 303 

feet silence. And so, as men rise through the experi- 
ence and trials of life, they find that high up there is a 
realm of peace. 

The method of Christ's teaching was not philosoph- 
'ical, nor was it logical. In part it was pictorial, dra- 
matic; but mostly it was annunciatory. He made 
simple statements, leaving them to their own force, 
and to the realization through experience of those 
that accepted them. It was as if there was in human 
thought and language neither any approach nor any 
form of argument. They were facts so high, so pro- 
found, that they could be only announced- — not forti- 
fied by speech. No other teacher that ever appeared 
had the imperial love that Christ had, or so made Him- 
self, His own system, the substance of His doctrine. 
It was not, " Come to Me, and I will show you the way 
to God ". It was, " Come unto Me, and I will give 
you rest". He was a door through which men were 
to come into the kingdom. He was a vine, and they 
were to be His branches. He declared that outside 
of Him, or without Him, they could do nothing. 
Everywhere He assumed in Himself the whole theory, 
philosophy and substance of His teaching. 






Christ taught by fiction. His parables are pictures 
addressed to the imagination ; and they produce in the 
minds of men more correct impressions of the truth 



304 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

than any mere statement of fact could produce. 
There is a constant play in Christ's teaching between 
light and dark, between knowing and not knowing, 
between the infinite and the limited. 

Now, if Christ was only a great man, we should not 
expect that there would be this play in His teaching. 
You do not see it in the writings of Goethe or of 
Shakespeare except when they are describing it in 
others as the fruit and product of inspiration. If the 
Lord Jesus Christ had squared and jointed everything 
by rule and law it might have been said, "There is 
one who works like a man in the limitations of the 
earthly sphere". But He does not; He acts as one 
who is subject to limitation, and recognizes it ; He has 
mystery above Him, and speaks truths that are out of 
our reach ; He gives evidence in His appearance, in 
His conversation and in His discourses, of one who is 
familiar with the upper, spiritual and invisible sphere, 
and Who is attempting, by His life and teaching, to 
interpret it in the lower, physical and visible sphere. 
So there is in the life of Christ a manifestation of 
divinity; a double consciousness; a sense of things in 
this world, and a sense of things infinitely beyond this 
world, with thoughts and feelings playing back and 
forth between heaven and earth, like a shuttle in a 
loom carrying a golden thread, the upper part of the 
fabric being invisible, and only the lower part, where 
it touches him, being visible. 

Advice to unwilling men is like hail-stones on slate 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 305 

roofs ; it strikes and rattles and rolls down and does 
them no good. 

It's surprisin' how we take advice that travels the 
same way we do ! It's like hittin' a ball the same way 
it's rollin' a'ready. 

Love of beauty is not love of God, but if through 
this outer court of the temple you come more easily 
into His presence, go by that way. The child has a 
right to nestle in his father's bosom, by whatever 
means he has climbed to it. 






Intelligence implies a certain condition of the know- 
ing faculties. Knowledge is the fruit of intelligence. 
There is just as much difference between them as 
there is between skill and the product of skill, or 
between husbandry and the harvests that husbandry 
can produce. A man may have intelligence and 
scarcely any knowledge. A man may have a good 
deal of knowledge and hardly any intelligence. We 
see men that have plunged right and left into history 
in all directions, but that are not intelligent after all. 
They are cumbered by their knowledge ; they do not 
know what to do with it ; and they are no more rich 
in knowledge than the ass that carries gold from the 
mine to the mint is rich in gold. But where one has 



;o6 THE CROWh' OF LIFE. 



both intelligence and knowledge and is growing in 
them both, that is a transcendently noble thing. 






Hate a lie ! A liar is worse than the man who has 
got the plague. You cannot afford to be liars ; and 
you connot afford to be truth speakers unless you live 
worthy of the truth. 



* 
# * 



It is not necessary that a man should always tell 
everything, but whatever he tells, it is necessary that 
that should always be truth. 






A man has a right to concealment. The soul has 
no more business to go stark naked down the street 
than a man has to go stark naked as regards his 
body. A man that has not a great silence in him, a 
great reserve in him, is not half a man — he is a bab- 
bler, he leaks at the mouth. 



* 



If lying were more common than speaking the truth, 
society would be like a heap of sand, it would fall 
apart. The cohesion is the belief in men's veracity. 
A lie has to have a cutting edge of truth or it would 



. THE CROWN OF LIFE. 307 

not be worth anything. It is the truth that works a 
lie into anything like victory. 



* * 



A man that will not tell the truth without an oath 
won't tell the truth with an oath. You cannot make a 
man honest by machinery. There has got to be 
established in him an automatic honesty, an honesty 
individual. 

There are different sizes of feathers on an eagle; 
there are wing-feathers, and tail-feathers, and down. 
And there are wing-feather lies, and tail-feather lies, 
and downy lies. You can lie without opening your 
mouth, as well as by opening it. Your little finger can 
lie as well as your tongue. 






I think we must judge of human character as men 
do of timber. I do not care what a man's character 
may be, the effect upon it of his telling a lie is what 
a worm channel is in a sill of oak. When a stick 
of timber has one worm channel running through it, 
it may be a strong stick of timber yet, but it is weak- 
ened some. When it comes to have two or three 
of these channels running through it, it is good for 
nothing. 



3o8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






Oh, dear! Shall we ever get done with lying? It 
is one of the few domestic manufactures which need 
no protection, and flourish without benefit to the 
producer or consumer. 



I believe there are folks who do not lie in thought 
or in feeling; but they are all in heaven. On earth, 
when a man so lives that everybody can see him 
inside and out, from his perfect truthfulness — when 
a man speaks the truth absolutely he has got to be a 
man so good that the Lord does not keep him here 
long. I do not speak of vulgar bluntness, but I speak 
of that state of mind in which the love of truth in the 
very inward parts prevails and dominates the life; the 
yea is yea, and the nay is nay, and there is no shad- 
ing off of either of them. 

A broken-down scholar is like a razor without a 
handle. The finest edge on the best steel is beholden 
to the services of homely horn for ability to be useful. 
Never out-run health. 

I have reason to believe that a good deal of the 
theology of the past has sprung from dyspepsia; that 
a great deal of the tormenting aspects that have been 
given to the sweetness of Divine truth has arisen from 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 309 

the melancholia of men that have lost digestion, or 
who have enthroned the blue devils in their liver. 
Health is morality to a large extent — the foundation 
of it anyhow. 

The foundation of real activity, and the foundation 
of normal conditions of disposition, lies in good, sub- 
stantial sound health 

* 

A man without any constitution is like a cannon 
with a cornstalk carriage under it, and every time he 
fires it off he knocks the carriage over, and by and by 
destroys it. 

To grow up in good sound health, without violation 
of the great canons of morality, and with the law of 
moderation fixed upon every appetite and passion, is 
no insignificant ideal for a young man or woman. 



* 



A man who spends his whole force to save his soul, 
has not much of a soul, nor one that is worth saving. 
It is the quintessence of selfishness. 






No man can live to the flesh, and reap life ever- 



310 THE CROlViV OF LIFE. 

lasting. Be not deceived ; God is not easily mocked, 
and no man can live here to selfishness, passion, appe- 
tite, self-seeking, lust, and all the under corrosive 
appetite and reap life everlasting. 






When a man goes out of life he sinks from sight 
like the extinguished taper, if he has lived in the ani- 
mal exclusively; but if there has been in him a seed 
worth planting again, I believe he will be planted 
under a fairer sky and in a better soil, and with ten 
thousand temptations removed from him which are 
incident to this life, and that we shall see through the 
circling ages many redeemed after life, cleansed from 
the body and from selfishness, and educated into 
higher spiritual aspiration, and into the great love- 
knowledge of God's universe. Those that live in 
this life achieving victory, and that know how to speak 
the language of heaven shall be caught up without 
anything intermediate, and be with the Lord at once. 






When I think about the condition of men after 
death, I think of all Africa, and that, too, for thou- 
sands of years ; I think of all Asia, and that for 
myriads of years; of every island of the sea; of the 
population that is foi* multitude more than the drops 
of water in the ocean forty times magnified; of that 
vast sweep of creation, illimitable, uncountable, of 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 311 

human beings that have been created in conditions 
that imply and necessitate imperfection, and ask my- 
self, "What has God done for them all? Where are 
they? Are they wailing in immitigable torment?" If 
that be so, never let me mention the name of God 
again. Let me never violate my own nature by call- 
ing him " Father ". Such dogma applied to the race 
through all past time derides, despises, and treads 
under foot the very foundation ideas which we have 
of fatherhood. 

What has annihilation in it so terrible as the contin- 
ued existence of unfit natures? What happens when 
the taper goes out? The earth does not shake. The 
sun does not stop. Nobody notices it. It simply 
goes out. And when a man has spent the forces of 
life here, and has not reached the condition which 
makes another stage possible to him, suppose he 
simply goes out? What inhumanity is that, or what 
shock? He that would live on must live well now; 
and if he does not begin in his future conditions at the 
highest point conceivable, he may live high enough up 
to take a new road and a new start, under better and 
more favorable circumstances, justifying the wisdom 
of his having been " subjected in hope " to this exist- 
ence of change and struggle; and in the endless ages 
of growth, by the "abiding" forces of faith and hope 
and love, he " shall be delivered from the bondage of 
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of 
God ". But as for those that go persistently and 



312 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

steadily lower and lower until they lose the suscepti- 
bility and the possibility of human evolution and 
moral development, suppose the end of the body is the 
end of life for them ? In the great abyss of nothing- 
ness there is no groan, no sorrow, no pain, no mem- 
ory ! It is the theory of endless conscious misery 
of imperfection and wickedness without hope, that 
accuses the Father Creator of cruelty. 



* 



Envying is covetousness, or worse ; it is the recog- 
nition of good fortune, or of attainment, or of power, 
or of something else in those that are above, and the 
man is angry at their goodness because it rebukes his 
meanness or his littleness. 

What if they are better and more popular than you ? 
Thank God that there is some one better and more 
popular than you. What if they are wiser than you? 
Thank God that there is one more star in the firma- 
ment above yourself. What if they have the commen- 
dation of men while you have only the dry bitter root 
to chew } Thank God that somewhere there is some- 
body that is not getting troubled as you are. There 
are tears enough, and misfortunes enough, and there 
are burdens and cares laid on those that are eminent 
quite enough to keep them down in their own estate. 






"It is a rare friendship that will tell a man his 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 313 

faults. A man will take almost anything else in hand 
sooner than he will offend a friend by saying to him, 
'You are liable, here, to downfall and disgrace'; and 
before a man knows his failings himself everybody else 
knows them." 

Friends dwelling together in the most perfect unity 
and sympathy hardly need to talk. The action inter- 
prets itself, a look interprets itself, and it is almost the 
beginning of that spiritual experience of the other life 
yet to come by which, doubtless, we shall know as we 
are known without communication, by which we shall 
see, by which we shall hear, without eye and without 
ear; the power of the spirit to translate itself into 
another spirit, without the instruments and the narrow 
media that belong to our earthly life. And that power 
which we have on earth developed very slenderly, may 
also be developed in our relationship with God, so 
that we may say every day, "I am His, and He is 
mine, what can I wish for more .'* " 



* 



Looking at persons from the critical point of view 
is almost fatal to friendship. Criticism of the faults 
of friends is consistent if you have a very large dispo- 
sition of charity. You do not need to blind yourself 
to M^eaknesses ; but no man is fit for friendship who 
has not the love that overcomes faults in those whom 
he loves. You must not make friends of those who 



314 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

are so different from you, so far removed from your 
habits of mind, as that you cannot encompass them 
with your charity and love. 






If you cut off a branch of a tree, and immediately 
bandage it, so as not to allow the air to get at the 
wound, it will grow again ; but if you crack a crystal 
vase, no growing process in creation will repair the 
damage. It is cracked glass forever and forever. 
Nothing will take out the crack. Now, although a 
cracked friendship, like a cracked tumbler, may be 
cemented, the moment you put it into hot water the 
bottom will fall out, or it will come to pieces. 






Christ went forth bearing his cross — not dragging 
it. And we are to bear our crosses. We are to bear 
them in such a way that men, looking upon us, shall 
have something to admire and something to imitate. 

There are many persons who, having their cross put 
upon them, and not being at liberty to choose whether 
they will bear it or not, drag it upon the ground. How 
many persons there are that go groaning and grumb- 
ling and repining, because they cannot get away from 
certain things ! I never feel the south wind, that I do 
not smell flowers, I never feel the northeast wind that 
I do not smell storms. There are some who are gar- 
denesque to me, and there are others who remind me 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 315 

of winds that blow across New Foundland, and bring 
fogs, dreary and dismal. They live in a perpetual 
cold sizzle of disappointment, disagreeable and com- 
plaining. Oh no ! They do not mean to give up ; they 
will not lay aside their cross ; but alas ! they are bear- 
ing that hated cross right through the mud along the 
thoroughfare. The cross is a clog to them. 






Every true cross-bearer learns to carry his cross as 
if it was an ornament, rather than a burden, and 
finds, after a time, that it carries him. It gives more 
strength to him than he gives to it. 

I marvel that there are not more victories. I mar- 
vel that there is not more glorying over the cross. I 
marvel that there are not more songs of victory sung. 
For there is no joy greater than that of grief over- 
come. Nothing is more joyous in this world than the 
song of one who has risen from a lower to a higher 
plane. 

It is said that an unhelped cross is the heaviest 
thing a man ever carried; but a Christ-touched cross 
is about the lightest thing a man ever carried. 






When God breaks up your plans, and throws you to 
the very ground, and breaks all the threads in the 



3i6 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

loom which you were weaving, and says to you, " Begin 
again", is there any Christ for you at that point of 
overthrow ? Can you go forth unto your Saviour 
marking that place in his life where he was over- 
thrown, identifying it in some way by association with 
your overthrow ? Can you stand rejoicing with Christ 
at that very point of humiliation and crucifixion ? How 
noble are the opportunities ! How seldom are men, 
themselves, noble enough to know their opportunities ! 
And the best things to polish us, the best things to 
strengthen us, the best influences to bring us near to 
Christ, we go mourning over, as if they were the grave- 
yards of our hope. They are not ; they are open win- 
dows of God through which shines the bright light of 
the higher life. 

What care I where I am if I am only where Christ 
put me ! A faithful soldier, who knows that the gen- 
eral's eye is upon him, cares not whether he is detailed 
for this duty or for that. It is a matter of indifference 
to him whether he is placed at a point of peril or a 
point of safety. His desire is to serve his leader as 
best he can. A man will fulfill the commands of one 
whom he esteems, reveres, worships; and when a man 
is Christ's and realizes it, he trusts him implicitly. 



# 



The man who trusts in God, lives in the upper story 
of his head; while the man who does not trust in God, 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 317 

lives in the lower story of his head. The man who 
trusts in God, lives in an observatory, where he enjoys 
the sunlight and the pure atmosphere of heaven; 
while the man who does not trust in God, lives down 
■ i a dark and dungeon cellar. 



* 
* * 



Let the world rock. If the foot of God is on the 
cradle, fear not. 

Throw away that misleading word "unity". Put in 
its place instead the word "harmony", and then all 
theology will be reconciled and reconcilable. Then 
we can go all together though we differ, yea, the more 
can we rejoice going together that we differ. The 
infantry need never envy the cavalry nor the artillery 
the infantry. They are all composite elements of the 
one grand army, and each helps in its place to bring 
about the victory; and when the victory is attained 
there are no diversities and no disputes about the har- 
monized elements. 

Harmony is not a monotone. Harmony is not 
unison. It is concordant differences. 



* 
* # 



God is forever producing difference. Men, stu- 



31 8 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

pidly, are forever striving to rub it out. God never 
allows anything to go through two generations just 
alike, and we are coopering up the work of God, or 
trying to do it, and to restore a certain sort of lost 
unity or identity. 

That is not the true church which is largest, or the 
most numerous, or the most decorated, or the most 
acerb in its theology, or the most historic in its 
claims; but that which continually brings forth the 
sweet fruits of righteousness in the form of love. 



* 
* * 



The only unity this world will ever see, or that God 
wants it to see, is unity of spirit, unity of love, of sym- 
pathy, of helpfulness. 



* 
* * 



The sense, the physical body, is the instrument by 
which the w^orld acts upon our hidden man, and by 
which the hidden man acts back again upon the world. 
It is as with an organ. What is there in the pres- 
sure that is given by the hand, and what is there in 
the wild winds that are confined in the bellows, that 
should be converted into aerial music, stirring up 
every passion, every admiration, every joy and pleas- 
ure in the human soul.'' The man gives impulse by 
touch and by mechanical aids, and the moment the 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 319 

organ receives that, it responds and rolls out those 
grand anthems that have filled the arches of cathe- 
drals and the arch of Time itself. That which the 
instrument is, man is; more wonderfully, more vari- 
ously, more beautifully, receiving touch from all nature 
and the diffused God in it; and then as a son of God, 
giving back in different forms and in different melo- 
dies and harmonies, the impulse and the results. 



* 
* * 



A pocket is like a cistern, a small leak at the bot- 
tom is more than a large pump at the top. God sends 
rain enough every year, but it is not every man that 
will take pains to catch it, and it is not every man 
who catches it who knows how to keep it. 






The great trouble with men is not a lack of oppor- 
tunity, it is the need of disposition to improve the 
opportunities they have. Our trouble is not to know 
what to do, it is to have a heart to do what we know. 



* 

^ * 



Some of the best things that men ever do are things 
that they do as it were, accidentally. The best things 
that a man says are not the things he sets out to say, 
but those that he says without thinking. A whole life- 
time is sometimes crowded into a single moment. 



320 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






He only who made the heart can touch all the 
chords. 






Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing 
to all one's after life melodies and harmonies of old- 
remembered joy. 



* 



Conceit is narrow. No man can be very broad 
,who will build with nothing but that which he quarries 
from himself. There are men enough who think when 
they hear themselves echoed, that a God spoke. 

The whole spirit of the New Testament is in favor 
of the resurrection in a form which shall answer to our 
earthly body, and that, in some high and noble way, 
belongs to it. As the blossom to the bud, as the 
flower to the seed. In that sacred hope we cherish 
the body, and bury it as one might bury a tulip, hya- 
cinth, or narcissus — a homely bulb — but how beauti- 
ful the flower, when all-resurrecting spring shall call 
for it, and the answer shall be a fragrant blossom. 

* 

Taste in its time and proportion, is one element 
of religion. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 321 

Matter-of-fact things are good; but they are infi- 
nitely better where they are accompanied by taste and 
reason and veneration and beneficence, than where 
they are without these accompaniments; for the whole 
is better than any single element. 



* 

* * 



Three elements enter into the creed of a great cit- 
izen. That which his ancestry gives. That which 
opportunity gives. That which his will developes. 






The spark that was kindled at Fort Sumter fell 
upon the North like fire upon Autumnal prairies. 
Men came together in the presence of this universal 
calamity with sudden fusion. They forgot all separa- 
tions of politics, parties or even religion itself. It was 
a conflagration of patriotism. The bugle and the 
drum rung out in every neighborhood; the plough 
stood still in the furrow^; the hammer dropped from 
the anvil; work and pen were forgotten; pulpit and 
forum, court and shop felt the electric shock. Parties 
dissolved and re-formed. The Democratic party sent 
forth a host of noble men and swelled the Republican 
ranks, and gave many noble leaders and irresistible 
energy to the hosts of War. The whole land became 
a military school, and officers and men began to learn 
the art and practice of war. 



322 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 






The South had builded herself upon the rock of 
Slavery. It lay in the very channels of Civilization 
like some Flood Rock lying sullen off Hell Gate. 
The tides of controversy rushed upon it, and split into 
eddies and swirling pools, bringing incessant disaster. 
The rock would not move. It must be removed. It 
was the South itself that furnished the engineers. 
Arrogance in Council sunk the shaft. Violence clanked 
the subterranean passages, and Infatuation loaded 
them with infernal dynamite. All was secure. Their 
rock was their fortress. The hand that fired Sumter 
exploded the mine, and tore the fortress to atoms. 
For one moment it rose into the air like spectral hills ; 
for one moment the water rocked with wild confusion, 
then settled back to quiet and the way of Civilization 
was opened! 



* 
# ^ 



As Christ has embraced the human soul in his own, 
so hath he taught me to call all men my brethren. 






It is very easy for a man to hate evil and not love 
good. The two things come from two different sides 
of the brain. A man hates error with the bottom of 
his brain. He loves truth with the top of his brain. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 323 






I am for war just so far as it is necessary to vindi- 
cate a great moral truth. But one particle of violence 
beyond that is a flagrant treason against the law of 
love. I would go to war with every state in the South- 
ern Confederacy, if called to go into the army, and 
would hold them to the conflict till the cause of right 
was vindicated; and then I could at the same time 
pray for those misguided men, as easily as to-night I 
can pray for my babes. I regard them as citizens 
yet, I love this whole country. I love it in its past 
and in its prospective history. God do so to me, and 
more also, if that hour comes when I do not feel for 
them, misguided though they be, as anxiously as for 
my own kin and brethren. 






On Sunday morning, the fourteenth of April, it was 
known that Sumter had surrendered. The scales fell 
from men's eyes ! 

There was war ! 

The flag of the Nation had been pierced by men 
who had been taught their fatal skill under its protec- 
tion ! The Nation's pride, its love, its honor suffered 
with that flag, and with it trailed in humiliation. 

Without concert, or council, the whole people rose 
suddenly with one indignation to vindicate the Nation's 
honor. It came as the night comes, or the morning — 
broad as a hemisphere. It rose as the tides raise the 



324 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

whole ocean, along the whole continent, drawn upward 
by the whole heavens. 

Some days seem to be characterized by some single 
sense. There are head-days and heart-days, and 
there are eye-days and ear-days and promiscuous days, 
in which dehcious sensations of pleasure at life in gen- 
eral predominate. These last are transcendent. 

We are filled with the very affluence of peacefulness 
and joy. There is neither sorrow nor want nor mad- 
ness nor trouble, in the wide wwld ! But such days 
have no art to perpetuate themselves. To-morrow 
will sweep you to the opposite pole. Yet they are ot 
great use. They exalt our ideal of life. Subjects 
held up in their light will never be as low and ignoble 
as they may have been before. And the light in 
which Duty, Love and Labor, shine in these lucid 
days will give us exaltation for many days after. 



* 
* * 



Flowers have an expression of countenance as much 
as men or animals. Some seem to smile ; some have 
a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; 
others again are plain, honest and upright, like the 
broad-faced sunflower and hollyhock. What a pity 
flowers can utter no sound ! A singing rose, a whis- 
pering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle! Oh, what a 
rare and exquisite miracle would these be. 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 325 



* 
* * 



I love a flower that all may have ; that belongs to 
the whole, and not to a select and exclusive few. 
Common, forsooth ! A flower cannot be worn out by 
much looking at, as a road is by much travel. 






It is a shame for a generation to die bankrupt. 
Every generation should take what has been already 
gained as capital, and die richer than it was born, 
leaving an inheritance of noble ideas to its successors. 



if * 



The newspaper is the carrier of preaching. When 
a man is conscious that what he is saying to-day in 
the air will be proclaimed on the housetop by the 
outrunning newspapers, he cannot but have larger 
thought, and a larger sympathy, and a larger influence. 






Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common 
people. 






A man who can only work and not think, is not the 
equal in any regard of the man who can think, who 
can plan, who can combine, and who can live not for 



326 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

to-day alone but for to-morrow, for next month, for 
the next year, for ten years. This is the man whose 
volume will just as surely weigh down that of the 
unthinking man, as a ton will weigh down a pound in 
the scale. Avoirdupois is moral, industrial, as well as 
material, in this respect; and the primary cause there- 
fore of unprosperity in industrial callings lies in the 
want of intelligence, either in the slender endowment 
of the man, or, more likely, the want of education in 
his ordinary and average endowment. 



^ 
* # 



A man is not to be educated because an education 
will help him to thrift in life, but because he is a man. 
It is his business to make his manhood larger; and 
education means manhood, all sidedness, in men. 






I think the days that precede millennial glory will 
have some other way than rote teaching, or the mere 
stuffing of a child with knowledge in some depart- 
ments, leaving life really to be his great educator; for 
when a man goes out now into life too sensitive, he 
very soon is ready, in the shop or in his profession, to 
repress the sensibility that he has in over measure; or 
he is too blunt and loses customers until he begins to 
smile and become courteous ; he learns it behind the 
counter, this looking upon everybody as if they were 
unlike everybody else, until by diversity of experience 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 327 

he finds out how different men are. The road to the 
front door of a man Hes in a very different direction, 
in different individuals. Some men have got no door 
but a back door, and some men have got a side door, 
and some a front door. Some men have got only a 
scuttle in the roof; you have to go down that to get 
into them ; and there is no instruction provided for in 
our courses, in our schools, on these fundamental 
differences among mankind. Men are left to pick 
them up ; the stupid never do, and the bright do, and 
use them to their own advantage, selfishly. Do you 
suppose the human race is to go on forever and for- 
ever in that way, and a man's internal structure be an 
enigma, and the method of training it lag far behind 
the training that the athlete gives to the bodily organs? 
No ; the day will come when men will understand the 
inside just as well as the outside. 



# * 



There are a great many fathers and mothers whose 
nature is to govern. The spirit of autocracy and mon- 
archy is in them. They do not govern their children 
to teach those children to govern themselves, but they 
govern them for the sake of governing them ; and 
they keep it up; and the children never learn self- 
government. 

The object of governing a child is to get rid of the 
necessity of governing him. It is to teach him the 
use of his own faculties with regard to the great laws 
which are fundamental to you and him in common. 



328 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

If you bring up your children with a liberty which 
has restriction enough to make them obey the law, and 
with an amount of government which make them inde- 
pendent and self-reliant, you will do that which is best 
for them. They will make blunders; but they will 
learn. They will fall into mistakes ; but those mis- 
takes will be part of their training. You can bring lip 
a child so that he is all compliance toward externality; 
but he will have no power in himself ; and will never 
amount to anything. These round, smooth folks, that 
come up so carefully, and that will roll all ways with 
equal facility, and are of no particular account, serving 
as mere punctuation points to keep other folks apart, 
have not been well developed, or taught, or bred. 






Communities and nations are to be developed by 
the development of men, and not by the enactments of 
legislation. Legislation may do some things; it may 
remove some obstacles ; it may facilitate progress ; but 
after all, the indispensable condition by which the 
great mass of working men, at home and abroad, are 
to acquire place, and ease, and comfort, is that they 
shall be trained and cultured. 

He that would go up must go up by the elevation of 
his being. It is being which makes rank and condi- 
tion, substantially. 



The invisible — how rich it is! How mightier than 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. ' 329 

the visible! Visible things are mixed, confused, 
uncertain and unreliable ; but in the invisible and 
moral, measures are never jarred ; they are always 
right; and there is a place where the sigh is louder 
than the trumpet of praise among men. 

* 

The invisible things in this world are more wonder- 
ful than the visible. It is not the things that address 
themselves to our eyes, or to our ears, or to our hands, 
that are the most wonderful, even in nature. The 
silent elements, the unseen forces, the chemists in the 
roots, the mighty monarchs of power hidden in clouds, 
the energies of nature, the products which we*see, but 
not the causes — these are streaming forth evermore; 
but we are too coarsely made to appreciate them, and 
we only see the outcome — not the work of . exquisite 
elements that are producing the results of nature. If 
the soul could only have its outcome and product ren- 
dered visible, still more marvelous would be the exha- 
lation, as it were, of life that would ascend and fill the 
whole air. If all the emotions that rise in every soul 
through one single live-long day could address them- 
selves either to the eye or to the ear, how many 
dramas that are never written would there be ! 



* 



How many concerts that are never heard would play 
in the air ! What hope, what fear, what sorrow, what 



330 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

joy, what tenderness of love, what rudeness of anger, 
what despotism of pride, what throngs of ever-weaving 
fancies, what strange thoughts of things, or qualities 
of imagination, what faith, what enormous productive- 
ness there is in the silence of every human soul, and 
the unwritten realities of human life put to shame, 
whether in fearfulness or in grandeur, all that litera- 
ture ever indited! We lose, we waste the most pre- 
cious part; and human life, like an unstopped vase of 
effervescent and perishing quality, exhales and throws 
off into the absolute and the eternal the very best por- 
tions of itself. The detritus, and often only that, 
remains. 

«. 

Whatever there is of purity, of hope, of generous 
sentiment, of courage, of magnanimity or of fidelity, 
never dies. As the sun draws invisible particles from 
the river and the sea, and holds them in the air, 
cloud-treasures from which the earth supplies itself, 
so each generation finds itself compassed about with 
this "great cloud of witnesses", that rain down moral 
influence upon generation after generation. All that 
men call real, practical and substantial, is the most 
perishable. That which men call imaginary, imprac- 
ticable and theoretic often lives forever. 



* 



How society teaches us to wash the outside of the 



ThE CROWN OF LIFE. 331 

cup, or the platter, or the dish ! How much there is 
infamous before God and stenchful before men, if it 
were only brought out and made known to us. This 
hidden man is more beautiful than any of you think, 
and more horrible. The saint dwells in many a bosom, 
not far removed from the very angels of the throne 
itself. Devils inhabit the heart of many and many a 
"respectable" man. O, bring out your silent man; 
make him speak, unroll what is written in his thought. 
Bring from the loom of his inward activity the fabric, 
and let men see what he has wrought, and what fig- 
ures are worked into the pattern. How many men 
could hold up their faces then ? And how many men 
•who have produced nothing for the market, not much 
for the neighborhood, little for the uses that are com- 
mon on earth ; that have neither the pen of the ready 
writer, nor the tongue of the orator, nor the wings of 
the poet, are rich unto God? They dwelt in their 
meditations, and their imaginations remain untrans- 
lated into human language or into human conditions, 
but they are rich toward God. 






A man is what he thinks, a man is what he feels, a 
man is what he desires. In other words, the hidden 
man is the real man that goes to judgment ; not what 
we work out but what we desire to work out; not 
merely the moral character of the act that is completed 
but he moral character of the intention and design 
within. 



332 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 



* 
# * 



The moment a man begins to think about dishon- 
esty he has half committed it ; the moment a man 
begins to think about a lie he has half told it. 



* 
* * 



There is succor for every man who is tempted, no 
matter how low he may be. There are men who 
stand in the shadow of perdition ; there are men who, 
from the very beginning, count themselves unworthy of 
hope ; and yet no temptation befalls a man that is so 
low, or so gross, or so brutal, that he cannot carry it 
into tfie presence of Christ, and say, "Oh, thou 
Tempted in All Points as I Am, help me ", for that is 
His name — Tempted in All Points as I Am. 






There are many men who are like an apple-tree in 
my garden, whose trunk and roots, and two-thirds of 
the branches, are in the garden, and one-third of whose 
branches are outside the garden-wall. And there are 
many men whose trunk and roots are on the side of 
honesty and uprightness, but who are living so near 
the garden-wall that they throw their boughs clear over 
into the highway where iniquities tramp, and are free. 

It is never safe for a man to run so near to the line 
of right and wrong, that if he should lose a wheel he 
would go over. It is like traveling on a mountain 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. ZZI 

road near a precipice. You should keep so far from 
the precipice that if your wagon breaks down there is 
room enough between you and the precipice. 






There are some things that it is a sin to look at 
twice. And yet there are men who hunt them up. 






I do not believe in bringing up the young to know 
life, as it is said. I should just as soon think of bring- 
ing up a child by cutting some of the cords of his body 
and lacerating his nerves and scarring and tattooing 
him, and making an Indian of him outright, as an ele- 
ment of beauty, as I should think of developing his 
manhood by bringing him up to see life — to see its 
abominable lusts, to see its hideous incarnations of wit, 
to see its infernal wickedness, to see its extravagant 
and degrading scenes, to see its miserable carnalities, 
to see its imaginations set on fire of hell, to see all 
those temptations and delusions which lead to perdi- 
tion. Nobody gets over the sight of these things. 
They who see them always carry scars. They are 
burned. And though they live, they live as men that 
have been burned. The scar remains. 



# 



It is dangerous for men to indulge in pleasures 



334 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

which stand near temptations. It is dangerous for 
men to stand in the neighborhood of such temptations. 
I do not care how innocent the things are per se. It 
was perfectly innocent for me to ride a mule up the 
sides of Swiss mountains, but it was perfectly provok- 
ing the way the mule would take the very edge of the 
path, when there was a precipice three or four thou- 
sand feet deep below me, so that if the animal had 
made a misstep I would have been dashed to pieces. 
Thousands of men are riding mules — that is, them- 
selves — on the outer edge of dangerous paths; and it 
will only require one small mistake to throw them to 
the bottom of a deep precipice. And no man has a 
right to live even a moral life, in such a way that his 
path winds around so near a precipice that the slight- 
est deviation from the exact course shall destroy him. 



* 

^ * 



A man may act from strong selfish motives, and from 
strong avaricious motives, and yet there may be min- 
gled with these higher motives. This question then 
comes up, when there are mixed motives: "Does the 
presence of the lower vitiate or destroy the higher!" 
No. It adulterates it, but it does not destroy it. 
Where a man acts for a right thing from a pure motive ; 
where a man sees the truth and follows it conscien- 
tiously, from love to God, from love to man, and from 
love to the truth itself, that is the highest form of con- 
duct. But if afterwards there is the consciousness 
in his bosom that while he acts from these higher 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 335 

motives interest comes in, this lower motive does not 
vitiate the others. It is his duty to see that the lower 
motive is kept in its proper place, but the higher 
motives are not destroyed by the existence of the 
lower one. A man is not necessarily a hypocrite who 
acts from different classes of motives; but he who acts 
from a lower class of motives under the pretense that 
he is acting from a higher class, is hypocritical. 

There is nothimg more common than for men 
to hang one motive outside where it can be seen, 
and keep the other in the background to turn the 
machinery. 






God destroys only that he may multiply. A great 
nature springs up, and the world seems to pivot on 
him; and men, when they hear of his decease, hold 
up their hands in panic, and say, "All the strings of 
affairs were tied to him, and now they are broken 
loose ". If a man is a great man, he prepares the way 
for twenty men, each of whom is perhaps not equal to 
him, but the twenty together are five times as great 
as he was. He distributes himself, and is buried and 
lives again in the tendencies which he has educated. 



* 



Every one that is working for men, patiently and 



335 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

generously, no matter how humbly, is working for 
God. The fact that you are working for God brings 
all things to a level. The lowest thing is exalted 
when it is for God, and the highest thing, when it is 
for God, is not much higher than the lowest. The 
last shall be first, and the first shall be last. 

We are not,; as necessary as we think. The sun 
will come up to-morrow if you do die. The stars will 
shine if you are not here to see them. Summer will 
come if your plough lies still. The world is not 
made to turn on you as a pivot. You occupy a very 
small place. Your little will, and your little purposes, 
scarcely crease the great orb of affairs. And no man 
is so necessary that of stones God cannot raise up 
one to take his place. The work that you have in 
undivided hands, God scatters and divides up among 
hundreds. 



* 



Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and 
tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill 
their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering 
words while their ears can hear them, and while their 
hearts can be thrilled by them. The things you mean 
to say when they are gone, say before they go. The 
flowers you mean to send for their coffins, send to 
brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave 
them. If my friends have alabaster boxes laid away, 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 337 

full of perfumes of sympathy and affection, which they 
intend to break over my dead body, I would rather 
they would bring them out in my weary hours, and 
open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by 
them while I need them. 



# 



I would rather have a bare coffin without a flower, 
and funeral without a eulogy, than a life without the 
sweetness of love and sympathy. Let us learn to 
anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Post- 
mortem kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. 
Flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over 
the weary days. 

Whether or not you are as good as the next man 
depends upon who the next man is. 






It is the amount of mentality which men put into 
their work that determines their place, their wages 
and their honor. 

The great law, the real law which determines the 
value of the services of men and of the products they 
produce, is that of mind. The value of these things 
depends upon the kind and the quantity of the mind 



338- THE CROIVN OF LIFE. 

that is put into them. He that employs common 
mental power in his work takes common wages. He 
that employs superior powers of mind in his work 
takes higher wages. He who has talents that every 
body needs and stands pre-eminent, like some distin- 
guished barrister at the bar, or like some wonderful 
artist at canvas, because he puts into his work more 
mind of better quality, than anybody else, gets the 
highest price for his labor. 

The real law, the underlying principle is, that the 
value of men's work, and of the products of their work, 
is to be determined by the amount of mind and the 
quality of mind which enters into them. 



* 



What if a man should go out with the theory that it 
was his province to bring wheat and rye and barley to 
one and the same scale, and that it was a corrupt mar- 
ket that gave a different price for each ? What if he 
should act on the principle that all grains should be 
valued alike, not only, but that chaff should be reck- 
oned in the same category? It would be about as 
sensible as the attempt in the great labor-market to 
lump men together, and equalize them, high and low, 
strong and weak, skilled and unskilled, and make 
them all alike, cutting down all natural processes of 



ranking. 



* 
* * 



A war between England and America would be like 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 339 

murder in the family — unnatural — monstrous beyond 
words to depict. Now, then, if that be so, it is our 
duty to avoid all cause and occasion of offence. But 
remember — remember — remember — we are carrying 
out our dead. Our sons, brothers' sons, our sisters' 
children — they are in this great war of liberty and of 
principle. We are taxing all our energies ; you are at 
peace, and if in the flounderings of this gigantic con- 
flict we accidentally tread on your feet, are we or you to 
have most patience ? When the widowed mother sits 
watching the shortening breath of her child, hovering 
between life and death — it may be that the rent has 
not been paid — it may be that her fuel has not yet 
been settled for; but what would you think of that 
landlord or of that provision dealer that would send a 
warrant of distress when the funeral was going out of 
the door, and arrest her when she was walking to the 
grave with her first-born son. Even a brute would 
say, "Wait — wait!" Yet it was in the hour of our 
mortal anguish, that when, by an unauthorized act, 
one of the captains of our navy seized a British ship 
for which our government instantly offered all repara- 
tion, that a British army was hurried to Canada. 






I have felt from the first that I hold a higher allegi- 
ance than any I owe to man — to God, and to that 
truth which is God's ordinance in human affairs, and 
for the sake of that higher truth, I have loved my 
country, but I have loved truth more than my country. 



340 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

I have heard the voice of my Master, saying, " If any 
man come unto me and hate not father and mother, 
and brother and sister, yea and his own Hfe also, he is 
not worthy of me". When, therefore, the cause of 
truth and justice is put in the scale against my own 
country, I would disown country for the sake of truth ; 
and when the cause of truth and justice is put in the 
scale against Great Britian, I would disown her rather 
than betray what I understood to be the truth. We 
are bound to establish liberty, regulated Christian lib- 
erty, as the law of the American Continent. 



* 
# * 



Slavery we always hated ; the Southern men never. 
They were wrong. And in our conflicts with them we 
have felt as all men in conflict feel. We were jealous, 
and so were they. We were in the right cause; they 
in the wrong. We were right, or liberty is a delusion ; 
they were wrong, or slavery is a blessing. 






Now anybody that is a great poet does not have to 
pump. It is the nature in him that rules him, and he 
can't help himself. He does not need to send out to 
see what this man thinks of it. It is the necessity of 
expressing one's self that makes a man a poet. And 
a man that is an orator is simply a man that has some- 
thing to say. It rules him, and rides him. He never 
runs panting along the dusty way of industry, trying 



THE CROWN OF LIFE. 341 

to hunt for eloquence. Whoever does that, never 
catches it. 

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, 
mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at 
every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his 
pall-bearers, and the cannon beats the hours with 
solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speak- 
eth ! Is Washington dead ? Is Hamden dead ? Is 
David dead .'' Is any man that ever was fit to live 
dead ? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unob- 
structed sphere where passion never comes, he begins 
his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the 
Infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. 
Pass on, thou that hast overcome ! 

# 

Join with us then, Britons. From you we learnt the 
doctrine of what a man was worth ; from you we 
learned to detest all oppressions ; from you we learnt 
that it was the noblest thing a man could do to die for 
a principle. And now, when we are set in that very 
course, and are giving our best blood for principle let 
the world understand that when America strikes for 
the liberty of the slave, and of the common people, 
Great Britian endorses her. 



Let all the nations stand off! Sweep around the 



342 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

ring, and stand off spectators, and now let these 
gigantic forms stand — Liberty and God — Slavery 
and the Devil — and no more put hand or foot into 
that ring until they have done battle unto the death. 

* 

Union is good if it is Union for justice and liberty; 
but if it is Union for slavery, then it is thrice accursed. 






Self-contemplation has no power to do any good. 
We must look out of self if we want to grow, not in. 
A ship-master might as well look into the hold of his 
ship for the North Star, as a man into his own heart 
for guidance and encouragement. We learn faith and 
hope and courage, by looking up to Christ, not down 
into ourselves. 

No man was ever yet made deep enough to satisfy 
himself. Forget that you live at all, in the absorbing 
sense that Christ liveth in you. Where the heart is 
fullest there is the most unconsciousness of itself. 



INDEX. 



Adversity 

Advice 

Aspiration 

Atonement 

Books 












85-92 

304-305 

138-142 

42-48 

207 - 208 


Beauty, Love of 
Ballot, The 
Brotherhood of Man 












304-306 

98-99 

222-227 


Bible, The 

Christ, Divinity of . 

Christ, Personal 












155-165 
16- 21 
32-42 


Consummation 












175-179 


Christianity 
Capacity 
Christian, The True 












256-257 
236-237 
195-201 


Compassion, God's 
Contentment 












253-259 
234-236 


Character 












208-210 


Creeds 

Conceit . . . , 












73-76 
320 


Cross Bearing 

Cheerfulness 

Conviction 












314-316 
297 - 298 
296-297 


Conversion 












184-188 


Conscience , 












281-283 



344 



INDEX. 



Care, Anxious 

Childhood 

Children, Death of 

Contemplation, Self 

Death 

Duty 

Doubt 

Emotion 

Education 

Exaltation of Spirit 

Envying 

Evolution 

Eloquence 

Enthusiasm 

Experience 

Election 

Faith 

Fear 

Friendship 

Feeling 

Fiction 

Future, The 

Flowers 

Faults 

God 

Gentleness 

Grace 

Generosity 

Genius 

Growth 

Greatness, True 

Gospel, The 

Heroism 

Happiness 

Humor 

Holiness 

Home 



179-184 

121 - 126 

119- 121 

342 

92-94 

50-53 
III - 112 

227 -229 

325-327 

782-783 

312 

165-167 

338-342 
267 - 269 
276-281 
295-296 
48-50 

53-54 
312-314 
215-218 
194-195 

83-85 

324-325 
201 -207 
21-32 
231-232 
190- 194 
100- no 
112 
142-152 
no- 112 
239-241 
265-267 
232-234 
221 - 222 

94-95 
320 



INDEX, 345 

Heaven 169-175 

Harmony ........ 317-319 

Heart, The ........ 320 

Health . . . 308-309 

Hope 294-295 

Inspiration . . . . . . . . 92-93 

Ignorance 293-294 

Influence, Divine . . . . . . . 61-68 

Illimitable, Work ....... 335-336 

Immortality ...... . . 342 - 348 

Intelligence ........ 305 - 306 

Invisible, The ........ 328 - 332 

Impulse ........ 221-222 

Imagination ........ 210- 211 

Joy 229-231 

Knowledge ........ 290 - 293 

Laws . . . . . . . . . 257-261 

Lying . . . . . . . . . 306-308 

Life 78-83 

Lord's Supper, The . . . . . . 211-214 

Liberality ........ 100- loi 

Liberty ........ 1-6 

Labor, Value of -T^yi - 338 

Love . . . . . . . . . 6-16 

Motherhood 184 

Manhood, Christian 131 -138 

Morality 244-346 

Meekness 99-100 

Mourning 97-98 

Motives 334-335 

Mistakes 221 

Marriage 298-299 

Names 189-190 

Nature 76-78 

Opportunity 319-320 

Ordinances 248-251 

Prayer 101-109 



346 



INDEX. 



Preaching 












283 - 290 


Patience 












301-302 


Peace 












302 - 303 


Probation 












295-296 


Profession of Religion 












238 - 239 


Providence, God's 












241-244 


Religion 












54-61 


Resurrection 












320 


Right, Vindication of 












321-324 


Regeneration 












248 - 249 


Revivals 












246 - 248 


Responsibility, Moral 












263 - 264 


Repentance 












274-276 


Retribution, Future 












309-312 


Sunday 












188-189 


Science 












113-116 


Solitude 












167-169 


Silence 












167-169 


Suffering 


. 










126- 131 


Selfishness 












299-301 


Soul -life 












95-97 


Sentiment 












241 


Success 












214- 215 


Sin . . . . 












269-274 


Sympathy 












336-337 


Self-denial 












218-221 


Truth . . . . 












68-73 


Taste . . . . 












321 


Trouble 












116- 119 


Trust . . . . 












316-317 


Teaching, Christ's 












303-304 


Tongue, The 












264-265 


Temptation 












332-334 


Wealth 












152-155 


Work . . . . 












253-256 


Waiting 












261 - 263 


Words 












109-110 



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